Nearly all ovarian cancer patients enrolled in NuCana‘s Phase 1b trial benefited from the combination of Acelarin (NUC-1031) plus Paraplatin (carboplatin), according to data presented at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2017 Congress in Madrid.
The trial, which included 23 evaluable patients with either recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer or platinum-sensitive disease, found that 96% of participants achieved at least stable disease following treatment. Thirty-nine percent had a reduction in tumor volume.
The poster, “PRO-002, a phase Ib dose-escalation study of NUC-1031 with carboplatin for recurrent ovarian cancer,” was presented by Sarah Blagden, the study’s director and an associate professor of experimental cancer medicine at the University of Oxford.
Acelarin, a nucleotide analog, was designed to help patients overcome resistance to common chemotherapies. It functions by adding new compounds to the traditional chemotherapy drug to help the chemotherapy overcome any resistance in the body.
The PRO-002 trial (NCT02303912) recruited 23 ovarian cancer patients who had been treated with an average of three prior chemotherapy regimens. Seventeen were either refractory or resistant to the prior platinum-containing regimen.
Results showed that one patient achieved a complete response, eight patients had a partial reduction of their tumor, and 13 had stable disease for at least 12 weeks. This represented an overall response rate of 39%, and a disease control rate of 96%.
Patients took on average 7.4 month before seeing their disease progress. Low blood cell counts were the most common adverse events at all dose levels with no unexpected adverse events experienced by patients to date.
“The fact that the Acelarin combination with carboplatin achieved these results in heavily pre-treated and platinum-resistant patients clearly demonstrates Acelarin is a very active agent,” Blagden said in a press release.
“The high disease control rate and durable responses achieved with the combination of Acelarin and carboplatin are exciting,” said Hugh Griffith, NuCana’s chief executive officer. “We remain focused on advancing Acelarin’s development for the treatment of patients with ovarian cancer as well as exploring its use for the treatment of other solid tumours.”