Date: 2016-10-24
Type of information: Presentation of results at a congress
phase: preclinical
Announcement: presentation of results at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2016 Congress
Company: Peregrine Pharmaceuticals (USA - CA)
Product: bavituximab and anti PD-L1 therapy
Action
mechanism: immune checkpoint inhibitor/monoclonal antibody. Bavituximab is a chimeric monoclonal antibody that targets phosphatidylserine (PS). Signals from PS inhibit the ability of immune cells to recognize and fight tumors. Bavituximab blocks PS to alter this immunosuppressive signal and send an immune activating signal. Targeting PS with bavituximab has been shown to shift the functions of immune cells in tumors, resulting in anti-tumor immune responses. Peregrine's clinical development strategy for bavituximab currently focuses on small, early-stage, proof-of-concept trials evaluating the drug in combination with other cancer treatments. This approach includes the recently announced grants by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) to support three different clinical trials of bavituximab treatment combinations. Those trials will evaluate novel bavituximab combinations in glioblastoma, head and neck cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma including an immunotherapy combination. Additionally, Peregrine continues to advance its pre-clinical collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center with the goal of evaluating combinations of bavituximab with other checkpoint inhibitors and immune stimulatory agents.
Disease: triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Country:
Trial details:
Latest
news: * On October 24, 2016, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals announced the presentation of preclinical study data demonstrating that phosphatidylserine (PS)-targeting antibodies similar to bavituximab are able to enhance the anti-tumor activity of anti-PD-L1 therapy in a model of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Data showed that a combination of anti-PS and anti-PD-L1 therapies, with or without paclitaxel, led to greater anti-tumor responses than any of the treatments administered as single agents or dual treatment combinations with paclitaxel, in the well-characterized E0771 murine model of TNBC. Study results were presented by researchers from Duke University Medical Center at the American Association for Cancer Research's Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Conference held October 20-23, 2016 in Boston, MA.
In addition to evaluating the anti-tumor activity of the various treatment combinations, researchers also examined the impact of various traditional cancer therapies on PS expression in cancer cells. Study results confirmed that levels of PS expression were upregulated in E0771 and 4T1 TNBC cells following treatment with chemotherapy, radiation or photodynamic therapy. Photodynamic therapy also was shown to increase PS expression on tumor cells.
