New drug shows positive data for pancreatic cancer patients

Clinical trial results of a new drug have shown positive data against fighting metastatic pancreatic cancer.

A new drug, IMM-101, extended the lives of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, which is the most intractable form of the disease, the Guardian reports.

The drug is said to have no side effects, a particular advantage over other immunotherapy treatments which are known to have debilitating side effects.

The study, completed by the British Journal of Cancer, details the median survival rate for people with metastatic pancreatic cancer at being between 2.8 and 5.7 months. 85% of the patients who were involved in the trials had metastatic disease.

IMM-101 was added to gemcitabine, the standard drug used to treat pancreatic cancer. Patients were tested with the newly added drug and also solely with gemcitabine. The trials were conducted over 20 institutions throughout 5 countries and included a total of 110 patients.

Positive results from the application of IMM-101 showed patients surviving longer than the median survival rate of 4.4 months; some lived up to seven months, some for more than a year and one survived almost up to three years.

Whilst the results showed positive signs, the overall survival rate for the total number of patients wasn’t significant. Those who were administered IMM-101 survived a median of 6.7 months compared to the 5.6 months’ patients survived just on chemotherapy the guardian claims.

However the study acknowledges the need for further research into IMM-101 and states that a follow-up PhaseI/IIa trial is being instigated in order to judge the safety, tolerability and activity of IMM-101 in combination with different chemotherapy treatments.

As quoted by the Guardian, Kevin Harrington, professor of biological cancer therapies at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, and a consultant at the Royal Marsden acknowledged the drug’s potential, but encouraged the need for further investigation: “This looks like a very interesting approach. It is different. It appears to be extremely well-tolerated and it has led to something that looks interesting in terms of survival but it hasn’t quite got there.”