- Telix Pharmaceuticals has received regulatory and ethical approval to begin the ENHANCING study with strategic partner GenesisCare
- ENHANCING is a Phase 2 study which compares the expression of prostate-specific membrane antigen – prostate cancer
- A total of 40 men with prostate cancer will be recruited and will receive therapy with enzalutamide
Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, Telix Pharmaceuticals has received regulatory and ethical approval to begin the ENHANCING study with strategic partner GenesisCare.
ENHANCING – the Enzalutamide-Enhanced Imaging study – is a Phase 2 study which compares the expression of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) before and after treatment with enzalutamide (Xtandi).
The trial will enlist 40 Australian men who are currently suffering from progressive metastatic prostate cancer. They will receive second-line androgen-deprivation therapy with enzalutamide.
It is believed that enzalutamide increases the PSMA expression in some patients with prostate cancer. The goal of ENHANCING is to calculate this increase to evaluate the potential of combining enzalutamide with PSMA-targeting radiopharmaceuticals.
Currently the only ways to treat prostate cancer are by brachytherapy – radioactive material placed into the body – and radiation therapy. Other treatments include surgery and medications.
The androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) drugs, such as enzalutamide, work by blocking the androgen (testosterone) receptor signalling pathway in order to stop disease progression.
By doing this such drugs, as enzalutamide, increase the expression of PSMA in certain patients, and by boosting the PSMA expression this has the potential to increase the vulnerability of PSMA-targeting therapeutics.
Telix CEO Christian Behrenbruch is pleased to begin the study and see the results.
“We are very pleased to commence this important study with GenesisCare in a patient population that may benefit from more aggressive combination therapies in the future,” he said.
“The use of a molecular imaging strategy to non-invasively evaluate the potential combination of enzalutamide and PSMA theranostics is both clinically novel and potentially informative for future clinical studies in this patient population.”
Telix shares are slightly up, trading for $1.42 in a $351.2 million market cap.