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Anticancer antibiotic  Bleomycin, an antineoplastic antibiotic isolated from Streptomyces verticillus, "has the highest rate of activity in squamous carcinoma that has so far been found for any drug," a Buffalo, NY, researcher reports.Takao Ohnuma, MD, PhD, cancer research clinician at Roswell Park Memorial Institute and research assistant professor of medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine, said the antibiotic "thus offers hope of new clinical studies that can provide a basis for better therapy."Speaking at the American Cancer Society's 13th Science Writers' Seminar in Phoenix, Ariz., Dr. Ohnuma reported on 38 patients with far-advanced cancer who were treated at Roswell Park with bleomycin only in doses of 1.25 to 26 mg/m2 of body area twice a week for six weeks.The results:

• Fourteen patients were excluded because of early death or insufficient data.

• One patient with welldifferentiated squamous cell carcinoma of the