Northwest presses on with DCVax brain cancer trial
This article was originally published in Scrip
Northwest Biotherapeutics is pressing ahead with enrolment into its ongoing large Phase II study of its personalised immune therapy for brain cancer DCVax-Brain.
Only 33 out of a planned 240 patients with glioblastoma multiforme had been enrolled in the study, when enrolment was suspended in 2008 due to the company running short on funds. But these patients continued to receive treatment, and, in the interim, Northwest has managed to place itself on a firmer financial footing. The company last summer raised around $6.4 million in debt and sales of new stock including $1.75 million from new private investors.
The company's Q3 balance sheet to September 2010 showed only $80,000 in cash remaining. However, in November, the company was awarded around $490,000 in two grants under the Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Grants Program of the US healthcare reform legislation.
Although the company appears to be running on fumes, the clinical work is proceeding. Further follow-up data from previous Phase I and I/II studies have provided encouragement for the DCVax-Brain programme. Results released last summer showed that 33% of patients had survived for four years survival and 27% had reached six-year survival with the therapy. With current standard of care (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy), the median survival is 14.6 months, with fewer than 5% lasting five years.
DCVax-Brain is a personalised therapy made from the patient's own dendritic cells and biomarkers from the patient's own tumour, and is designed to elicit a specific immune response to the cancer cells.
In the US, the incidence of glioblastoma multiforme is 10-12,000 cases per year.