Memorandum to Shareholders From Dr. Amnon Gonenne, MabCure's Chief Executive Officer - MarketWatch

June 1, 2010, 8:00 a.m. EDT · Recommend · Post:
Memorandum to Shareholders From Dr. Amnon Gonenne, MabCure's Chief Executive Officer
HASSELT, Belgium, Jun 01, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- MabCure, Inc. /quotes/comstock/11k!mbci (MBCI 0.32, -0.01, -3.03%) :

Dear Shareholders:

I am pleased to update you on the progress of our research and development.

Over the past several months we have been working intensively on advancing our various programs with an emphasis on melanoma and ovarian cancer diagnostics. We consider these two projects near-term in their respective development stages, as I describe below.

In January 2010, we announced the commencement of our clinical trials at the Ramathibodi Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand to evaluate the potential of our panel of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to diagnose ovarian cancer in high risk patients. Since the study began, patients have been recruited at a solid pace and in line with our schedule. In addition, we are privileged that the Thai National Cancer Institute has decided to join our study and is currently reviewing our study protocol. The study is estimated to be completed within 5-6 months, as originally planned.

In parallel to our study in Thailand, we are planning to commence a study in collaboration with a major medical center in Belgium of several hundred blood samples which were obtained from patients over the past several years. The purpose of this "retrospective" study is to provide additional proof of the ability of our MAbs to correctly diagnose ovarian cancer, and is of considerable importance given the significant number of blood samples to be tested.

The study will be "blind" to all involved (i.e. the samples will be coded and neither the clinicians nor MabCure scientists will know the identity of the specimens until the study is complete), so as to prevent any bias in the analysis of the results. The study is expected to last several weeks and will commence once a formal agreement has been signed with the Belgian medical center. As a prelude to this study, we conducted a pilot study on a limited number of these "retrospective" specimens to calibrate the optimal technical conditions for our MAbs.