Cephalon, Celgene Kick Off Biotech Confab

The American Society of Hematology kicked off its annual meeting this weekend, which means there was plenty of clinical data presented on treatments for a variety of blood cancers.

Cephalon(CEPH) and Celgene(CELG) were among the biotech companies making news this weekend at the event that will run through Tuesday. Here's a rundown:

Cephalon: Treanda Beats Current CLL Drug

Cephalon's experimental cancer drug Treanda bested a currently used chemotherapy drug in putting patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) into remission, according to results from a late-stage study presented Sunday.

Treanda has already been submitted to the FDA for approval as a new treatment for CLL, which is a cancer that affects a type of white blood cell. Cephalon expects a decision by the end of March 2008.

In the study presented Sunday, newly diagnosed CLL patients treated with Treanda (also known as bendamustine) reported a remission rate of 68% compared to a remission rate of 39% for patients treated with chlorambucil, a chemotherapy drug currently approved as a CLL treatment. These results, the primary endpoint of the study, were highly statistically significant.

Treanda also significantly improved the time before patients' cancer progressed -- 21.7 months for Treanda compared to 9.3 months for chlorambucil.

Approximately 15,000 new cases of CLL are diagnosed in the United States every year. If approved, Treanda could become the new front-line standard of care for the disease, although the drug will face competition from other drugs, including Genentech's(DNA) Rituxan, which enjoys considerable market share as a CLL treatment.