Targovax’s Neo-Antigen Immunotherapy for Pancreatic Cancer Shows Promise in Phase I/II
Norwegian-based Targovax has now reported its cancer immunotherapy, TG01, significantly prolonged 2-year overall survival of patients with resected pancreatic cancer versus standard therapy.
Professor Daniel H. Palmer, University of Liverpool Cancer Research UK Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, Liverpool, United Kingdom and lead investigator of the study, commented: “Pancreatic cancer is a highly malignant, difficult to treat disease and there is a significant need for innovative new treatment approaches. The results from this study are promising and demonstrate that TG01 is generally well tolerated in combination with gemcitabine. We observe a high level of mutant RAS-specific immune activation, and the observed survival rate is encouraging compared with chemotherapy alone. It will now be important to assess the clinical efficacy of the TG01 and standard of care combination treatment in a randomized setting, and we look forward to take part in the development of this innovative immunotherapy going forward”.
The trial assessed a total of 19 patients at the initial cohort, who had been administered TG01 / GMCSF in conjunction with gemcitabine.
The main aim of this study is that the evaluation of safety and immune activation, although the secondary goal includes
assessment of efficiency at a couple of decades.The outcomes in the trial suggested that 13 patients were alive after two decades when survival is counted from the time of resection, which happened on average two weeks prior to the first remedy, or 12 were living when counted from the time of original treatment.
Øystein Soug, Chief Executive Officer of Targovax said : “The high rate of immune activation, combined with the encouraging survival data which compares well with the large ESPAC4 trial, further strengthens our belief that our mutant RAS neoantigen vaccine has potential to be a promising new treatment approach in combating mutant RAS tumors, which constitutes up to 30% of all cancers.“
