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- Telix Pharmaceuticals (TLX) doses the first patient for its phase II Starburst study for treating a broad range of cancers
- The study will look to test the effects of its carbonic anhydrase (CAIX) targeting PET/CT imaging agent TLX250-CDx
- TLX Chief Medical Officer Doctor Colin Hayward says the study will improve company insight and enable the assessment of CAIX as a future potential biomarker
- TLX shares are up 0.26 per cent, trading at $11.44 at 11:45 am AEST
Telix Pharmaceuticals (TLX) has dosed the first patient for its phase II Starburst study for treating a broad range of cancers.
The study will look to test the effects of its carbonic anhydrase (CAIX) targeting PET/CT imaging agent TLX250-CDx.
The Starburst study is designed to investigate CAIX expression in patients suffering from a diverse range of solid cancerous tumours, including breast, cervix colorectal, lung and ovarian cancers.
CAIX is an over-expressed protein residing on the surface of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), and tumours expressing CAIX typically represent hypoxic characteristics and are more aggressive to treat.
Tumours expressing CAIX also feature a tumour microenvironment (TME) that can express resistance to immunotherapies and other cancer treatments.
The company’s phase II study will explore these tumours within their refractory setting to assess whether they can be targeted with CAIX for imaging, as well as therapeutic applications.
The company announced the study would build on “encouraging” preliminary data from two investigator-initiated studies in triple-negative breast cancer and non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
One of these studies was Telix’s successful phase II Zircon study, which demonstrated the potential of TLX250-CDx in disease settings.
“CAIX is a cancer target that has now been validated in Telix’s Phase III ZIRCON study in ccRCC, and so it is very interesting to explore expanding the potential utility of the same investigational agent in a series of other tumour types known to express this important target,” Principal investigator for the starburst study Doctor Jackson Kiser said.
TLX Chief Medical Officer Doctor Colin Hayward said the study added value to the company’s clinical insight and would enable the assessment of CAIX as a future potential biomarker.
TLX shares were up 0.26 per cent, trading at $11.44 at 11:45 am AEST.
