XOMA's new strategy based on hard lessons

XOMA Corp., surveying the dashed expectations for drugs to treat endotoxin-related diseases, is returning to the fray with a new clinical strategy that it hopes will exploit the hard lessons from previous setbacks.

In designing the clinical trial program for its Neuprex bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (rBPI-21), the company is avoiding sepsis and focusing on two key principles: targeting diseases or disorders in which the drug can be given prophylactically or as soon as possible after the onset of symptoms; and focusing on situations in which endotoxin-related complications are the primary problem, rather than a secondary problem to an underlying disease...