Targovax announces encouraging overall survival data from an analysis of the first cohort of patients in its ongoing, phase I/II clinical trial evaluating TG01 (co-administered with GM-CSF) in resected pancreatic cancer given in combination with chemotherapy, gemcitabine, the current standard of care, study CTTG01-01.
Data from this patient cohort showed that 68% of evaluated patients (13/19) were still alive after two years if survival is counted from time of resection which occurred on average two months prior to first treatment, or 12/19 if counted from time of first treatment. While the cohort is small and there is no control arm, this rate compares favorably with the available published historical two-year survival rates of resected cancer patients treated with gemcitabine alone of between 30% and 53% (J Neoptolemos 2010, J van Loethem 2010, H Oettle 2013, M Sinn 2015, K Uesaka 2016; In these reported studies Overall Survival measured either from surgery or treatment randomization).
Dr Magnus Jäderberg, Chief Medical Officer of Targovax commented: “We are encouraged by the two-year overall survival rate of patients treated with TG01 in this trial, versus the expected rate from published historical data when treating with gemcitabine alone, the current standard of care. Whilst acknowledging the small size of this first patient cohort and the lack of a control arm, we are encouraged by what seems to be a signal of efficacy in this highly malignant and difficult to treat cancer. This key milestone for Targovax also triggers a further iteration of plans for the future clinical development of TG01. We have submitted an abstract to the ASCO annual meeting in June when we plan to present the full data.”
CTTG01-01 is an open label study conducted in four centres in the UK and Norway. A first cohort of 19 patients each received 36 injections of TG01/GMCSF synchronised with six cycles of gemcitabine and have now completed the study. The main objectives of the study are an assessment of safety and immune activation. The secondary objective is to assess efficacy (disease-free survival and overall survival) at two years. The Company has received consent to enable the reporting of overall survival for all patients in the cohort. CTTG01-01 has been financially supported, in part, by The Research Council of Norway and Innovation Norway.
TG01 is Targovax’s first product to arise from its TG-Peptide platform. The platform yields injectable peptide-based onco-immunotherapies that are designed to treat patients whose tumors express RAS mutations. These mutations are associated with poor prognosis when present. By inducing immune responses in such cancer patients, TG-peptide immunotherapies have the potential to prolong the time to disease progression and to increase survival. RAS mutations are common in a number of cancers. Published data reports 85% of pancreatic cancer cases have such mutations.
