Ziopharm Oncology Inc. said its controlled IL-12 platform showed antitumor responses when used as a single treatment for breast cancer and brain cancer.
Two trials evaluated evaluated Ad-RTS-hIL-12 plus veledimex, a gene therapy, in patients with breast cancer that has metastasized, or spread to other parts of the body, and patients with recurrent glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that begins in the brain.
According to updated results from the phase 1 study in glioblastoma, patients who received the therapy had a sustained median overall survival of 12.7 months compared to historical controls of five to eight months survival. Overall survival is the length of time from diagnosis or start of treatment that patients remain alive.
For the metastatic breast cancer, disease control rate, or the percentage of patients who responded to the treatment, was 44% at week six and 22% at week 12. Further, reductions in tumor size in both treated and nontreated lesions was observed, the Boston-based company said.
The drug regimen showed a "consistent and attractive" safety profile, and drug-related toxicities were fully reversible when veledimex was discontinued.
Ziopharm said it also initiated a separate stage 1 trial to evaluate the drug combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s cancer drug Opdivo for the treatment of glioblastoma.
