Kite Pharma Inc., a part of Gilead Sciences Inc., said its experimental T cell receptor therapy Kite-439 helped shrink the tumors of patients with solid tumor cancers caused by HPV.
T cell receptor therapy is a kind of personalized immunotherapy that works by activating the immune system's ability to identify and target specific tumors.
Gilead acquired Kite Pharma for $11.9 billion in October 2017.
In an ongoing phase 1 study, conducted by the National Cancer Institute, Kite-439 is being evaluated in patients with epithelial cancers caused by HPV type 16, such as cervical, head and neck, anal, and genital cancers, whose tumor cells have the E7 protein and were given between three and seven previous lines of systemic cancer therapy.
Patients with these tumors whose cancers have returned after treatment or are not responsive to standard therapy are incurable.
Based on the results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, three of the seven evaluable patients who received the therapy showed a decrease in tumor size, while two patients tumors did not increase or decrease in severity.
Kite said the tumor shrinkage lasted for as long as nine months and were experienced by patients with vulvar, oropharyngeal and anal cancer.
The company will file an investigational new drug application for the drug to treat solid tumors caused by HPV type 16 with the E7 protein by the end of 2018, said Alessandro Riva, Gilead's executive vice president for oncology therapeutics and head of cell therapy.
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.
