• 7/6/2006
  • London, England
  • staff
  • www.lse.com.uk

Recently-listed Hutchison China Meditech Ltd said US medicine regulators have given it permission to broaden the scope of the first clinical trials of its lead experimental cancer drug.

HMPL-002 is a botanical extract under development as an orally administered treatment of head and neck cancer and non-small cell lung cancer in patients undergoing radiotherapy.

The phase I/II trials can now be widened to include the much larger population undergoing concurrent platinum-based chemoradiotherapy, which is now considered the standard treatment for most locally advanced head and neck cancers.

Chief executive Christian Hogg described the decision as ‘good news’.

‘Widening the universe among which we can conduct clinical trials will make it easier and speedier to recruit trial patients. More fundamentally, it broadens the future market potential for this important drug candidate.’