Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company advancing DCVax personalized immune therapies to treat cancer, has recently announced that the Firm’s Chief Technical Officer Dr. Marnix Bosch presented encouraging survival data on 51 patients suffering with Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer who were treated with DCVax®-L.
Data evidenced considerably longer than expected survival in individuals with apparent recurrence of their cancer; this included those with such aggressive types of cancer whose tumors were re-growing after 6 weeks of radio and chemotherapy daily treatments after surgical removal of the initial tumor.
Dr. Bosch’s presentation entitled “Prolonged Survival In Patients With Recurrent GBM Who Are Treated With Tumor Lysate-Pulsed Autologous Dendritic Cells,” can be accessed for up to a month at http://nwbio.com/webcasts/.
Overall Survival data is available for all 51 patients, however, MRI images are only available for 46 patients who were classified by an independent company specialized in medical imaging. The company divided these 46 patients into three groups: 20 Rapid-Progressor Patients — individuals with a new lesion equal or larger than 1 cm in size or with a tumor growth of 25 percent or more both at a Baseline Visit and at Month 2 thereafter; 25 Indeterminate Patients — those with evidence of progression at the Baseline Visit and followed by modest regression/modest progression or stable disease; and 1 Pseudo-Progressor — a patient whose image of Month 2 evidenced resolution of most of the prior appearance of tumor growth seen during Baseline Visit.
Researchers found that the median Overall Survival (OS) of the whole group was 18.3 months. The 20 Rapid-Progressors had an expected median OS of 8.3 to 10.8 months upon treatment with current drugs, with their OS improving to 15.3 months when treated with DCVax-L. The 25 Indeterminate Patients had an expected OS of 14.6 months and those treated with DCVax-L improved their OS to 21.5 months. Furthermore, the Pseudo-Progressor patient is still alive with an OS of 30.1 months to date.
Not only did DCVax-L demonstrate an excellent safety profile but it also was shown to improve survival chances. “We are quite encouraged to see survival times in our DCVax-L treated Information Arm patients that exceed the expected survival times with existing treatments by 50% or more. This survival data, which has been collected by the independent CRO managing our Phase III trial, provides an encouraging insight into the potential results of the DCVax-L treatments for newly diagnosed patients in the Phase III trial. The survival data also reinforce the results we have seen with extended survival in our prior Phase I/II trials, and reinforce NW Bio’s position as a leader in immune therapies for cancer,” said Linda Powers, CEO of the company.
