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ProscaVax reduces prostate cancer disease progression
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Phase 1a study results showed ProscaVax increased PSA doubling time and increased immunity to PSA, according to a manufacturer-issued press release.
ProscaVax (OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals) is a novel immunotherapeutic cancer vaccine consisting of a combination of PSA and interleukin-2 and granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor.
In the trial, investigators treated 20 patients with hormone-naive and hormone-independent recurrent prostate cancer with six intradermal ProscaVax injections.
Seventy percent of patients had increased PSA doubling time after therapy, demonstrating slowed tumor growth at a minimum of 31 weeks posttherapy.
Most patients (n = 15 of 18) had increased immunity to PSA at 31 weeks.
Four patients showed disease progression at follow-up, three of whom did not have an increase in PSA doubling time.
“These data continue to build upon an impressive dataset from the study indicating that ProscaVax is inhibiting prostate cancer progression [among] patients who have failed today’s standard therapies. There is a body of evidence in relapsed and advanced prostate cancer patients that slowing the velocity of PSA increase and, therefore, increasing PSA doubling time has a significant impact on improving prognoses,” Jonathan Head, PhD, CEO of OncBioMune, said in the release.
“In my view, not only would a therapy that can increase PSA [doubling time for] a majority of patients obviously be extremely valuable in the therapeutic sense, but there is the possibility that monitoring PSA [doubling time] can help identify patients who may require additional more aggressive treatment regimens due to inability to decrease PSA velocity,” he added. “We look forward to mid-stage studies to better understand the clinical benefit of ProscaVax and the opportunity to improve clinical care in this area of unmet medical need.”