According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 3,040 children will be diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) in the United States this year. While the five-year survival rate for ALL in children is 87 percent, the prognosis for a child with relapsed ALL remains low. These harrowing statistics are pushing biopharmaceutical companies to continue to improve research efforts for the treatment of ALL.

Immunomedics Inc. (Nasdaq: IMMU) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune and other serious diseases. Utilizing its proprietary technologies, the company has created a pipeline of therapeutic product candidates.
The company today announced promising results of a study in which epratuzumab was used in combination with chemotherapy as a treatment for children with relapsed ALL, including nine patients achieving a complete response. The positive results of the study were published in the August 2008 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, entitled “Chemoimmunotherapy reinduction with epratuzumab in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in marrow relapse: a Children’s Oncology Group Pilot Study.”

“We are pleased with these encouraging results in children with ALL. The Children’s Oncology Group (COG) is continuing to enroll patients into the ongoing phase II portion of this study, and we look forward to their future results,” Cynthia L. Sullivan, president and CEO of Immunomedics stated in the press release. “We continue to work with other oncology study groups to implement new clinical trials combining epratuzumab and veltuzumab.”

Let us hear your thoughts below: