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... Isis Pharmaceuticals Licenses Antisense Anti-Cancer Drug to Sarissa Isis Pharmaceuticals Licenses Antisense Anti-Cancer Drug to Sarissa LONDON, Ontario, and CARLSBAD, Calif., Feb.

14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

(Nasdaq: ISIS) and Sarissa, Inc., a biotechnology company emerging from the University of Western Ontario, announced today that Isis has licensed an anti-cancer antisense drug to Sarissa.

The drug is an antisense inhibitor of thymidylate synthase (TS), a well-known drug target that protects cancer cells from the effects of several chemotherapy treatments.

In preclinical studies, antisense inhibition of TS suppressed human tumor cell growth and overcame tumor cell resistance to marketed TS-targeted drugs.

"This licensing agreement with Isis will enable us to move our oncology drug discovery and development program forward.

The combination of our knowledge of the biological role of thymidylate synthase with Isis' expertise in antisense discovery and development and second-generation chemistry has the potential to yield an exciting and cutting-edge treatment for cancer," said Mark Vincent, M.D., President and CEO of Sarissa.

"Looking ahead, we plan to complete a series of preclinical experiments to prepare the drug for IND submission and human clinical trials." "This transaction with Sarissa is another example of our successful satellite company partnering program.

Through these relationships, we are expanding the reach and...

... Fast Company February 2005, Page 66 By: Jena McGregor At Eli Lilly, learning from past failures is a routine part of the culture.

Every failed compound gets a thorough examination, which can lead to new insights, or in some cases, survival of another drug.

For example, Lilly keeps on staff a mathematician, Clet Niyikiza, who studies how complex systems fail.

By looking deep into the cellular levels of a failed anticancer drug Lilly developed in the early 1990s, Niyikiza helped save a newer chemotherapy drug, In 2004, Lilly initiated Project Phoenix, which gives every failed Phase I compound not just a second, but a third pass.

"You have to look at failures, because that's the only way you can move forward in the future," says Niyikiza, who knows all too well the danger of missing weak signals.

He grew up in the savannahs of East Africa, where small movements in the grass may suggest a predator.

"What may be fatal is what is not so obvious," he says.

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