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| SciClone CEO Friedhelm Blobel--Courtesy of BioWorld via YouTube |
SciClone Pharmaceuticals said it plans to develop and register its oral mucositis treatment SGX942 for Greater China. The drug is being developed by Soligenix after the two companies entered into a development pact in 2013. That deal saw Soligenix gain access to SciClone's oral mucositis clinical and regulatory data library and in return SciClone gained commercialization rights to SGX942 in China, Hong Kong and Macau, according to a statement from the companies. Soligenix recently said it had received "positive preliminary results" from its Phase II clinical trial using the treatment in patients with head and neck cancer. "SGX942 is an innate defense regulator (IDR), a new class of short, synthetic peptides, with a novel mechanism of action in that it modulates the body's reaction to both injury and infection towards an anti-inflammatory and an anti-infective response," the companies said in their statement, adding that "the Phase II preliminary results reported by Soligenix showed a significant reduction in the duration of severe oral mucositis in patients receiving chemoradiation therapy for treatment of their head and neck cancer." Release
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