This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Phase 2 trial of galinpepimut-S shows promise for high-risk patients with multiple myeloma
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The phase 2 trial designed to evaluate galinpepimut-S for the treatment of multiple myeloma demonstrated a clinical benefit in high-risk patients following autologous stem cell transplantation, according to updated results issued by the drug’s manufacturer.
Galinpepimut-S (Sellas Life Sciences) is a WT1 immunotherapeutic anticancer treatment.
The study — initiated in June 2014 — included 20 patients with multiple myeloma who had minimal residual disease after autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT), including 15 who had high-risk cytogenetics at diagnosis.
The 18-month OS rate was 88% in 18 evaluable patients, and median PFS was 23.6 months.
Median OS has not yet been reached.
Patients treated with galinpepimut-S demonstrated a 2.5-fold increase in median PFS and 2.6-fold increase in 18-month PFS rate compared with an unmatched cohort of patients on continuous thalidomide maintenance in the Myeloma IX trial.
“This treatment has shown the ability to substantially extend the lifespan of patients with high-risk multiple myeloma, which remains a clinical challenge,” study researcher Guenther Koehne, MD, PhD, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, said in a press release. “Based on these results, galinpepimut-S continues to provide strong indication of a meaningful clinical benefit following ASCT in high-risk multiple myeloma, particularly in the context of an adverse cytogenetic profile. The need for innovative, efficacious and tolerable therapies among multiple myeloma patients is undisputed and we are excited about the possibility of applying a novel anti-WT1 active immunotherapy in myeloma.”
Initial data will be presented at the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation annual meeting in Marseille, France.
Galinpepimut-S also demonstrated positive phase 2 results in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia and malignant pleural mesothelioma, and is expected to be investigated in phase 3 trials this year, the release said.
“These new data further underscore the potential for galinpepimut-S to target an array of tumor types,” Angelos Stergiou, MD, ScD hc, vice chairman and CEO of Sellas, said in the release. “The data both validate our focus on targeting malignancies with subclinical disease with galinpepimut-S monotherapy, and also support the expansion of our clinical trial program to include combination approaches in addressing a wide variety of cancers.”