Amgen melanoma vaccine shrinks tumours
pharmafile | March 17, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Amgen, Cancer, Yervoy, melanoma, t-vec
Amgen’s investigational cancer vaccine T-vec has managed to shrink the size of advanced melanoma tumours in a late-stage trial.
The drug talimogene laherparepvec, also known as T-vec, is an engineered virus designed to replicate inside the injected tumour killing cancer cells there, as well as prime the immune system to attack other cancer cells around body.
These latest findings are from a pre-specified retrospective analysis of patients with metastatic melanoma, that showed T-vec reduced the size of injected tumours and also non-injected tumours that had spread to other parts of the body.
The data were gleamed from a Phase III study evaluating talimogene laherparepvec in patients with injectable, unresected stage IIIB, IIIC or IV (late-stage) melanoma compared to treatment with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF).
This trial analysed 4,000 tumour lesions to study the response to the drug in injected versus non-injected tumours.
Of the directly injected tumours, 64% shrank by at least half, and 47% of those had a complete response, meaning the lesion had disappeared.
Of the uninjected lesions in the skin or lymph nodes – which are known as ‘non-visceral tumour lesions’ – 34% shrank by at least half with a complete response seen in 21% of those.
Amgen is already testing T-vec in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s melanoma vaccine Yervoy (ipilimumab), and has agreed to study T-vec in combination with Merck & Co’s experimental immunotherapy from a highly promising class called PD-1 inhibitors.
“These data add to the body of evidence supporting talimogene laherparepvec’s local and distant effect, and its potential ability to stimulate a systemic anti-tumour immune response,” says Sean Harper, executive VP of research and revelopment at Amgen.
“Melanoma remains a devastating and difficult-to-treat disease, and talimogene laherparepvec continues to demonstrate encouraging results in this setting.”
Rates of melanoma
Only around 20% of melanoma patients are alive after five years (which is seen medically as a cure) but this is starting to improve as new medicines such as Yervoy take effect.
Before the advent of these new medications in recent years melanoma was poorly treated with just chemotherapy on offer, and no new advances were registered since the 1970s until Yervoy hit the market in 2011.
But the rate of the disease has been growing exponentially as more people are being exposed to higher rates of UV radiation from the Sun – the main culprit in melanoma – meaning new treatments are needed which are subsequently highly lucrative.
Melanoma itself is one of the most aggressive types of solid cancers and tends to kill more men than women, although women are more prone to the disease.
Ben Adams
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