Novacea halts ASCENT-2 trial

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, California—Novacea, Inc has ended its phase III ASCENT-2 clinical trial of Asentar (DN-101), the company's investigational cancer therapy for the treatment of androgen-independent prostate cancer. The trial was halted due to an imbalance of deaths between the two treatment arms, as observed by the study's Data Safety Monitoring Board. The study was comparing the benefits of weekly Asentar, an oral, intermittent high dose of calcitriol, plus docetaxel (Taxotere) with the current standard of care. The company plans to fully analyze the data to attempt to understand the cause of the higher death rate in the Asentar/Taxotere treatment group.