Subject: Vestar to Provide Drug For AIDS Condition Free to Some Patients
Date: Published: 1/15/93 (37 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology:
    Vestar to Provide Drug
    For AIDS Condition
    Free to Some Patients

    SAN DIMAS, Calif.  -- Vestar Inc. said it will provide for no
 charge limited quantities of its experimental DaunoXome drug to
 certain AIDS patients with advanced Karposi's sarcoma.
    The drug, made at the pharmaceutical concern's plant here, will
 be available initially to about 100 patients in New York City.  The
 Food and Drug Administration has reviewed the plan and given
 permission to proceed with it, Vestar officials said.
    Patients who receive DaunoXome will be monitored by qualified
 physicians, said Michael E. Ross, executive vice president of
 medical and regulatory affairs.  "There is enough promise that {the
 drug} might offer some important benefit; though not a proven
 benefit," he said.
    DaunoXome is Vestar's formulation of the anticancer agent
 daunorubicin.  In clinical trials of DaunoXome to date, 60% of about
 150 patients with advanced Karposi's sarcoma have had a partial
 response, and many others have had their disease arrested, Vestar
 said.  The company hopes to file a new drug application with the FDA
 later this year.
    AIDS activists hailed Vestar's move.  "We've known about the drug
 since the AIDS conference in Amsterdam" last summer, said Mark
 Milano, a member of Act Up/New York, an AIDS organization.  "We
 contacted the company and were able to negotiate with the company
 and the FDA," he said.

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