ImmunoGen touts a PhIII comeback in ovarian cancer, eyeing a 2022 accelerated approval

Mark Enyedy, ImmunoGen CEO

When Im­muno­Gen’s lead an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate flunked a Phase III study in ovar­i­an can­cer a cou­ple years ago, the com­pa­ny clung to hope that it would per­form bet­ter in a sub­group of pa­tients with high fo­late re­cep­tor al­pha (FRα) ex­pres­sion.

On Tues­day, re­searchers un­corked topline Phase III re­sults sug­gest­ing it was right — and in­vestors cheered on the news with a 40% boost to Im­muno­Gen’s stock price $IMGN. CEO Mark Enyedy says he’s go­ing af­ter an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval and plans to file in the first quar­ter of 2022.

A to­tal of 106 plat­inum-re­sis­tant ovar­i­an can­cer pa­tients who had tak­en a me­di­an of three pri­or ther­a­pies — at least one of them be­ing Genen­tech’s Avastin — en­rolled in the SO­RAYA study. Im­muno­Gen’s drug, called mirve­tux­imab so­rav­tan­sine, shrank tu­mors in 32.4% of pa­tients at a me­di­an fol­low-up of 8.1 months. And five of those pa­tients achieved a com­plete re­sponse.

‘Any CR is ground­break­ing,’ co-prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor Rob Cole­man said in a call with in­vestors on Tues­day. ‘Re­mem­ber, these are pa­tients who have pro­gressed through our best ther­a­pies mul­ti­ple times, and they have ac­tu­al vis­i­ble tu­mor that went away.’

The me­di­an du­ra­tion of re­sponse was 5.9 months, with near­ly half of re­spon­ders con­tin­u­ing on the ther­a­py, ac­cord­ing to Im­muno­Gen — though the com­pa­ny ex­pects to have more da­ta on DOR at a med­ical con­fer­ence next quar­ter.

While Im­muno­Gen says mirve­tux­imab was well-tol­er­at­ed, 41% of pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enced blurred vi­sion re­lat­ed to the treat­ment (though on­ly 6% ex­pe­ri­enced cas­es Grade 3 or high­er). Ker­atopa­thy, a dis­ease of the cornea, oc­curred in 35% of pa­tients and 29% ex­pe­ri­enced nau­sea.

‘Com­pared to oth­er tox­i­c­i­ties that we deal with, with oth­er types of ther­a­pies, this one is very straight­for­ward to deal with,’ co-prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor Ur­su­la Mat­u­lo­nis said of the vi­sion prob­lems. ‘I’ve been work­ing with this drug for many years now, and we have a set group of oph­thal­mol­o­gists we re­fer pa­tients to, and pa­tients are giv­en lu­bri­cat­ing eye drops, steroid eye drops.’

The oc­u­lar tox­i­c­i­ties are re­versible, she said, adding they ‘re­al­ly did not re­sult in very many pa­tients drop­ping out of the study.’

Be­yond SO­RAYA, Im­muno­Gen ex­pects to read out topline da­ta from a con­fir­ma­to­ry study called MI­RA­SOL in the third quar­ter of 2022 in the hopes of win­ning a full ap­proval for mirve­tux­imab.

In an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gates, a can­cer-killing tox­in is at­tached to a spe­cif­ic an­ti­body us­ing a biodegrad­able link­er. Im­muno­Gen has been a long­time play­er in the ADC field, but a Phase III fail­ure for mirve­tux­imab back in 2019 sent shares spi­ral­ing.

Pa­tients in that tri­al, dubbed FOR­WARD I, were giv­en ei­ther mirve­tux­imab or the physi­cian’s choice of sin­gle-agent chemother­a­py. Al­though the over­all re­sponse rate was high­er for mirve­tux­imab than chemother­a­py, the drug did not in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in pro­gres­sion-free sur­vival, which was the main goal. It al­so failed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove over­all sur­vival. Two months lat­er, the FDA bat­ted back an at­tempt at an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval based on a sec­ondary end­point.

At the end of 2019, Im­muno­Gen an­nounced it was launch­ing SO­RAYA in pa­tients with high FRα ex­pres­sion, which it said could sup­port ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval of the drug.

Enyedy is al­ready prep­ping a com­mer­cial launch, which he says could take off next year if all goes well.

While oncology researchers have long pursued the potential of cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, it was unclear whether these therapies would ever reach patients due to the complexity of manufacturing and costs of development. Fortunately, the recent successful development and regulatory approval of chimeric antigen receptor-engineered T (CAR-T) cells have demonstrated the significant benefit of these therapies to patients.

Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO

Even as public health officials remain guarded about their comments on the likelihood Omicron will escape the reach of the currently approved Covid-19 vaccines, there’s growing scientific consensus that we’re facing a variant that threatens to overwhelm the vaccine barricades that have been erected.

Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, one of the leading mRNA players whose quick vault into the markets with a highly effective vaccine created an instant multibillion-dollar market, added his voice to the rising chorus early Tuesday. According to Bancel, there will be a significant drop in efficacy when the average immune system is confronted by Omicron. The only question now is: How much?

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Barely a month after disappointing data shattered hopes for a major label expansion for the GI tumor drug Qinlock, Deciphera is making a major pivot — scrapping development plans for that drug and discarding another while it hunkers down and focuses on two remaining drugs in the pipeline.

As a result, 140 of its staffers will be laid off.

The restructuring, which claims the equivalent of 35% of its total workforce, will take place across all departments including commercial, R&D as well as general and administrative support functions, Deciphera said, as it looks to streamline Qinlock-related commercial operations in the US while concentrating only on a ‘select number of key European markets.’

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The FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee has decided to cancel a planned meeting on Thursday to discuss two cancer drugs that previously won accelerated approvals but failed to confirm clinical benefit in required follow-up trials or have taken a long time to finish those trials.

The FDA said in a statement that the meeting ‘is no longer needed’ but did not offer further detail on why exactly it was canceled, telling Endpoints News to contact the companies. Attempts to contact both Secura Bio and Acrotech went unreturned. The companies may have decided to pull these treatments from the market, or they’ve come to new agreements with the agency on their confirmatory trials.

GlaxoSmithKline has appointed Philip Dormitzer, formerly chief scientific officer of Pfizer’s viral vaccines unit, as its newest global head of vaccines R&D, looking to leverage one of the leading minds behind Pfizer and BioNTech’s RNA collaboration that led to Covid-19 jab Comirnaty, the British drug giant said Tuesday.

Dormitzer had been with Pfizer for a little more than six years, joining up after a seven-year stint with Novartis, where he reached the role of US head of research and head of global virology for the company’s vaccines and diagnostics unit.

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After years as the top spending pharma TV advertiser, AbbVie’s Humira brand finally downshifted earlier this year, ceding much of its marketing budget to up-and-coming sibling meds Skyrizi and Rinvoq. However, now Humira is back on TV with ads for another condition — Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS).

The chronic and painful skin condition results in lumps and abscesses caused by inflammation or infection of sweat glands, most often in the armpits or groin. Humira was first approved to treat HS in 2015 and remains the only FDA-approved drug for the condition. Two TV ads both note more than 30,000 people with HS have been prescribed Humira.

Drugmakers looking to design a new registry or use an existing one to support a regulatory decision on a drug’s effectiveness or safety will need to consult with a new draft guidance released Monday by the FDA.

The agency’s reliance on registry data for regulatory decisions dates back more than two decades, at least, as in 1998 Bayer won approval for its anticoagulant Refludan (withdrawn from the market in 2013 for commercial reasons) based in part on a historical control group pulled from a registry.

Michael Weiss, TG Therapeutics CEO

TG Therapeutics took a hit Tuesday morning after announcing the FDA will convene an adcomm ahead of the biotech’s upcoming PDUFA date for a blood cancer combo therapy, throwing a potential decision into limbo.

Though the exact date has not been determined, regulators are looking to hold a meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee sometime in March or April, TG said in a release. Given that timing, the biotech says it’s now unlikely the FDA will reach an approval decision by the March 25 deadline.
https://endpts.com/immunogen-touts-a-phiii-comeback-in-ovarian-cancer-eyeing-a-2022-accelerated-approval/