Promising results from Prima BioMed ovarian cancer trial

Prima BioMed (ASX:PRR) has reported promising interim results from a phase II trial of CVac, its prospective ovarian cancer vaccine.

Most notably, the results show a median progression-free survival time of 421 days for the group of seven initial patients, each of which received the CVac therapy.

The remaining 56 patients were randomised to receive either CVac or observational standard of care (OSC.) Of these, the median progression-free time was 365 days for the CVac group, compared to just 321 days for OSC.

Intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) data from an initial three CVac-treated patients also show a cytotoxic T cell response specific to the mucin 1 protein the therapy is targeting. This response was not replicated in the control group.

The company soon plans to release ICS data from a cohort of seven patients, and to have data available from all enrolled patients over the next year.

While acknowledging that the results are still at an interim stage, CEO Matthew Lehman said he believes the “promising CAN-003 data further validate[s] our ovarian cancer program and the CANVAS trial.”

CANVAS is an in-progress phase II/III trial set to involve 800 patients across 22 countries in Australasia, Europe and the US. The company enrolled its first patient in the trial in February, and expects to wrap up recruitment by 2H13.

Lehman said that on the strength of the early ICS data, “we will be evaluating the potential to explore CVac in other cancer types that overexpress mucin 1 as well.” These cancer types include colon, breast, lung and pancreatic cancers.

The CVac treatment involves using apheresis to harvest and then culture dendritic cells, which tell T-Cells which foreign proteins to target, and then reimplant the the cells into the patient.

Prima BioMed (ASX:PRR) shares were trading 12.12% lower at $0.145 as of 3pm on Monday.