- Prescient Therapeutics (PTX) shares rose 60 per cent this morning after expanding its Phase 1b study in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia
- This study comes after three patients had a total removal of the disease
- The study will now focus on the optimised dosing of PTX-200 in treating leukaemia
- Prescient is still up 60 per cent this morning with shares trading for 12 cents apiece
Prescient Therapeutics (PTX) shares rose 60 per cent this morning after expanding its Phase 1b study in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).
This follows an encouraging third complete response of the total eradication of the disease.
Three out of a total 15 patients experienced complete response during PTX’s study of relapsed or refractory AML, widely considered a highly difficult cancer population to treat.
The three patients were prescribed between 25-35mg/m2 PTX-200 together with 200-400mg/m2 cytarabine (a chemotherapy medication).
AML is a type of cancer in which bone marrow makes abnormal numbers of myeloblasts (white blood cells), red blood cells or platelets.
It is the most common type of acute leukaemia in adults and usually worsens rapidly if not immediately treated.
Common treatments include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, chemotherapy with a stem cell transplant, and other drug therapies.
Currently, a range of targeted therapies are being tested in clinical trials.
In conjunction with the study investigators, Prescient is making a protocol amendment to change the dosing schedule of PTX-200 in relation to the administration of cytarabine.
PTX-200 is a novel PH domain inhibitor that inhibits an important tumour survival pathway known as Akt, which plays a key role in the development of many cancers.
In a previous study, no side effects were observed suggesting that the effects seen in the current study may be due to the overlapping interaction of cytarabine and PTX-200.
Generally, most patients receiving treatment have tolerated planned dosage levels.
Transaminase (enzymes that accelerate the chemical reaction between amino and keto acids) evaluation was observed in three patients, although only one was dose-limiting.
The amendment will go through usual FDA and ethics committee reviews and the study should be able to re-start enrolment in early 2020.
“The three complete responses observed are very encouraging in a hard to treat patient population,” Prescient Chief Medical officer Dr Terrence Chew commented.
“Through this protocol amendment, we aim to get more patients through more cycles of therapy, with the hope of expanding upon these responses,” he added.
The study is led by world-renowned leukaemia expert Professor Jeffrey Lancet at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida and also includes Kansas University Medical Center and Yale Cancer Center.
Prescient is up 40 per cent at midday trade, with shares trading for 10.5 cents apiece at 12:40 pm AEDT.