Noxopharm Ltd said its NOX66 drug, in combination with chemotherapy, helped stop disease progression in patients with different types of late-stage cancers in a clinical trial.
The phase 1b trial, dubbed Chemotherapy Enhancement Program or CEP-1, combined NOX66 with a low dose of carboplatin chemotherapy to treat patients with breast, ovarian, lung and prostate cancers that were progressive, advanced and had spread to other sites in the body. These patients have also previously stopped responding to standard chemotherapies, including carboplatin.
Results show that 12 of the 14 patients evaluated saw their cancer stop progressing after completing the first three cycles of the combination treatment. However, only eight of the 12 patients completed the last three cycles of the treatment after one patient withdrew, one suddenly died and two demonstrated signs that the cancer was worsening.
One of the six patients who completed all six treatment cycles showed tumor size reduction, while others had tumors that did not shrink or grow in size.
Noxopharm will conduct a phase 2 study of the combination in patients who are being treated with different chemotherapy drugs in the middle of 2019. The goal of the research program is to show that adding NOX66 to the treatment regimen can improve the tumor-fighting effects of toxic chemotherapy as well as its safety.
The 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is expected to bring together more than 32,000 professionals from all over the world, with more than 2,500 study abstracts to be presented on-site and an additional 3,350 abstracts to be published online.
