Ovarian cancer clinical trial to test the drug Phenoxodiol was a post I did back in November of 2006.

Its back in the news again saying that so far the studies have shown Phenoxodiol to have an excellent safety profile, with few patients experiencing side effects.

New studies are also being done to help explain the mechanism by which Phenoxodiol induces cancer cell death. This drug interacts with a tumor specific protein and blocks cancerous cells from dividing, causing it to die.

Phenoxodiol also has showed some promise of restoring drug sensitivity in patients that have become resistant to treatment. The OVATURE trial that was discussed in my November post should have results out within 18 months.

The Phase III clinical trial known as OVATURE has gotten underway at The Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. This will be one of sixty hospitals that will participate in this ovarian cancer study to confirm the effectiveness of phenoxodiol in resensitizing patients to chemotherapy.

The total number of patients to be treated in this study will be 470, half will be treated with phenoxodiol and carboplatin and the other half a placebo and carboplatin. Thirty of the hospitals will be in the United States, twenty five in Europe and five in Australia. A Phase II study already conducted showed that phenoxodiol did have a chemosensitizing effect on ovarian cancer patients who's prior chemotherapy treatments failed.

Phenoxodiol is an investigational drug and at this time is not commercially available.