Menarini making progress in Albatross osteoarthritis study

Menarini has enrolled and treated more than 400 patients with knee osteoarthritis for its Albatross study.

Spread across research centres in Italy, France, Germany and Spain, the programme is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of new drug Fasitibant in the treatment of intra-articular osteoarthritis.

Fasitibant was derived from the Menarini Group's research in pain pathophysiology.

Dr Carlo Alberto Maggi, director of research at Menarini, said the first results from the study will be published in the second quarter of 2011.

He added that the company expects to release findings from its Mimosa study on the effectiveness of the anti-cancer vaccine Abagovomab at roughly the same time.

"For this study, nearly 900 women were enrolled in 151 trial centres in the US and Europe," Dr Maggi said.

More than 60,000 women are affected by ovarian cancer in Europe each year, according to Menarini.

The Italian company reported turnover of 2.79 million euros (2.35 million pounds) in 2009.