On March 16, 2016 Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: HALO), a biotechnology company developing novel oncology and drug-delivery therapies, reported the first patient has been dosed in its Halo-301 | Pancreatic study, a Phase 3 clinical trial in previously untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer patients (Press release, Halozyme, MAR 16, 2016, View Source [SID:1234509581]). Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo! The global, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial will study Halozyme’s investigational drug, PEGPH20, in combination with ABRAXANE (nab-paclitaxel) and gemcitabine in patients identified to have tumors that accumulate high levels of hyaluronan (HA). HA is a glycosaminoglycan, or chain of natural sugars that may impede access of drugs targeting the tumor. Halozyme’s PEGPH20 temporarily degrades HA and has been shown in animal models to increase the concentration of co-administered therapies in the targeted tumor.
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Halozyme also announced that the investigational device exemption (IDE) submitted to the FDA last month by Halozyme’s partner Ventana Medical Systems has been approved. This IDE allows Halozyme to use the Ventana HA CDx Assay as the companion diagnostic in Halo-301 to prospectively identify HA-High patients for inclusion in the study.
"The initiation of our Phase 3 study of PEGPH20 in HA-High pancreatic cancer patients marks a key milestone for the Halozyme team and the PEGPH20 development program," said Dr. Helen Torley, President and CEO of Halozyme.
Dr. Margaret Tempero, Director of the Pancreas Center at University of California, San Francisco and one of the Principle Investigators of the study, said, "High levels of HA have been associated with a worse prognosis in certain cancers, notably pancreas cancer. We have assembled a team of expert investigators at nearly 200 global sites to further study this potential link with the hope of bringing new treatment options to an area of high unmet need."
Halo-301 has an enrollment target of 420 HA-high patients and seeks to improve progression-free survival and overall survival in the patients receiving PEGPH20 plus ABRAXANE and gemcitabine compared to those receiving placebo plus ABRAXANE and gemcitabine.
The FDA granted orphan drug designation to PEGPH20 for the treatment of pancreatic cancer and fast track designation for PEGPH20 in combination with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel for the treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer. Additionally, the European Commission, acting on the recommendation from the Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products of the European Medicines Agency, designated investigational drug PEGPH20 as an orphan medicinal product for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Author: [email protected]
8-K – Current report
On March 16, 2016 Provectus Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT: PVCT, www.pvct.com), a clinical-stage oncology and dermatology biopharmaceutical company ("Provectus" or "The Company"), reported that the protocol for its phase 3 clinical trial for PV-10 as an investigational treatment for melanoma has been amended to reflect current and evolving standards of care and applicable patient population for a global study in melanoma (Filing, 8-K, Provectus Pharmaceuticals, MAR 16, 2016, View Source [SID:1234509578]). Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo! Major amendments to the protocol include the addition of talimogene laherparepvec (ImlygicTM) as an option for use as comparator. The amended protocol also extends eligibility to include Stage IV M1a patients having no active nodal or distant cutaneous or subcutaneous metastatic disease. These patients have disease characteristics and prognosis similar to that of the Stage IIIB and IIIC patients that initially defined the study patient population.
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In addition, the updated protocol clarifies eligibility for patients not having access to immune checkpoint inhibitors due to standard of care and those not having access to targeted therapy due to standard of care, as well as inclusion of patients who have failed targeted therapy. In the latter case, patients who have failed targeted therapy but meet study eligibility criteria have similar disease manifestations to the remaining study population but have limited treatment options.
Dr. Eric Wachter, CTO of Provectus, said, "These kinds of amendments are commonplace in phase 3 studies and serve to fine-tune the patient population and study procedures to match changing care standards for a large global study. They are the direct result of current and emerging options for these patients and have been developed with extensive input from global leading melanoma investigators. In particular, the most obvious amendment addresses approval in late October of Imlygic by the FDA as the first and only oncolytic viral therapy. As we implement the amended protocol we will assess potential impact on study timelines."
For further information about the study, please visit View Source
Blueprint Medicines Announces Worldwide Collaboration to Accelerate and Expand its Development of Novel Medicines in the Field of Cancer Immunotherapy
On March 15, 2016 Blueprint Medicines Corporation (NASDAQ: BPMC), a leader in discovering and developing highly selective kinase medicines for patients with genomically defined diseases, reported that it has entered into a worldwide collaboration and exclusive license agreement with F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (collectively, Roche) for the discovery, development and commercialization of up to five small molecule therapeutics targeting kinases believed to be important in cancer immunotherapy (Press release, Blueprint Medicines, MAR 15, 2016, View Source [SID1234556115]).
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Under the terms of the agreement, Blueprint Medicines will receive an upfront cash payment of $45 million and will be eligible to receive up to an additional approximately $965 million in contingent option fees and milestone payments related to specified research, preclinical, clinical, regulatory and sales-based milestones across all five potential programs. Of the total contingent payments, up to approximately $215 million are for option fees and milestone payments for research, preclinical and clinical development events prior to licensing across all five potential programs. In addition, the agreement provides for specified royalties and cost sharing, which are described in more detail below.
Immunokinases are intracellular targets known to regulate numerous aspects of immune response and represent an important opportunity for potentially innovative approaches to enhance the immune system’s ability to recognize and eradicate tumor cells. To date, cancer immunotherapies have demonstrated important clinical benefits. However, most cancer immunotherapies have focused on antibodies or combinations with existing approved therapies and have not yet targeted immunokinases with small molecules. This collaboration seeks to develop new mechanisms of modulating the tumor immune response by targeting immunokinases with the goal of enhancing response rates and broadening the utility of using cancer immunotherapies to treat additional cancer types.
"We believe Blueprint Medicines’ proprietary drug discovery platform and expertise in immunokinases, combined with our proven ability to move quickly through drug discovery, is a perfect complement to Roche’s expertise with cancer immunotherapy biology and in developing and commercializing innovative therapies," said Jeff Albers, Chief Executive Officer of Blueprint Medicines. "Under this collaboration, Blueprint Medicines will lead preclinical research and development through Phase 1 proof of concept for all five programs and retain U.S. commercial rights for two programs. We believe this highly collaborative relationship will enable us to accelerate our efforts in the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy and to continue building a leading biotechnology company."
The collaboration provides for the worldwide development and commercialization of immunokinases in the field of cancer immunotherapy for up to five small molecule drug candidates as single products or possibly in combination with Roche’s portfolio of therapeutics. Roche’s rights are structured as an option, triggered upon achievement of Phase I proof-of-concept, for an exclusive license to each drug candidate developed under the collaboration. Blueprint Medicines will be primarily responsible for preclinical research and conduct of clinical development for each program prior to any exercise of Roche’s option for such program. If Roche exercises an option for a program, Roche will be responsible for subsequent global development for that program through registrational clinical trials. For up to three of the five programs, if Roche exercises its option, Roche will receive worldwide commercialization rights for the licensed product. For up to two of the five programs, if Roche exercises its option, Blueprint Medicines will retain commercialization rights in the United States for the licensed product, and Roche will receive commercialization rights outside of the United States for such licensed product. Blueprint Medicines will also retain worldwide rights to any drug candidates for which Roche elects not to exercise the applicable option.
For any licensed product for which Roche retains worldwide commercialization rights, Blueprint Medicines will be eligible to receive tiered royalties ranging from low double-digits to high-teens on future net sales of the licensed product. For any licensed product for which Blueprint Medicines retains commercialization rights in the United States, Blueprint Medicines and Roche will be eligible to receive tiered royalties ranging from mid-single-digits to low double-digits on future net sales in the other party’s respective territories in which it commercializes the licensed product. Blueprint Medicines and Roche will share the costs of Phase 1 development for each collaboration target. In addition, Roche will be responsible for post-Phase 1 development costs for each licensed product for which it retains global commercialization rights, and Blueprint Medicines and Roche will share post-Phase 1 development costs for each licensed product for which Blueprint Medicines retains commercialization rights in the United States.
PharmaCyte Biotech Discusses Protection Strategy for Cancer and Diabetes Therapies
On March 15, 2016 PharmaCyte Biotech, Inc. (OTCQB:PMCB), a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing targeted therapies for cancer and diabetes using its live-cell encapsulation technology, Cell-in-a-Box, reported another in a series of articles that will serve to educate the public on its live-cell encapsulation technology and its use in developing treatments for pancreatic cancer and diabetes (Press release, PharmaCyte Biotech, MAR 15, 2016, View Source [SID:1234510782]). This educational piece addresses PharmaCyte’s intellectual property (IP) and the strategy that PharmaCyte will employ to protect that property.
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PharmaCyte’s IP consists of exclusive license agreements that PharmaCyte has with other parties and IP that PharmaCyte intends to create during the clinical development of its product candidates. In the questions and answers below, PharmaCyte’s Chief Executive Officer, Kenneth L. Waggoner, discusses PharmaCyte’s IP protection strategy, which consists of patents, patent term extensions, regulatory data exclusivity, market exclusivity for orphan drugs, know-how/trade secrets and trademarks.
PharmaCyte’s Intellectual Property Protection Strategy
Which family of patents protects PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer therapy and what is your plan to extend those patents?
"Before I answer that question, let me say that our pancreatic cancer therapy has two iron-clad protections that will far surpass any protection that our patents could ever bring if we can obtain FDA approval. I will discuss this a little later in this piece, but keep in mind while reading these responses that our pancreatic cancer therapy is going to remain protected long after the patents expire.
"Everyone interested in PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer therapy should be focused on the family of patents that deal with the live-cell encapsulation of genetically altered human cells that overexpress a form of the Cytochrome p450 enzyme system (normally found in the liver), and specifically on only 2 patents in that family. Those patents are set to expire in the United States a little over a year from now on March 27, 2017. These are the only patents that pertain to PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer therapy. Now, while these patents are set to expire next year, we certainly aren’t sitting idly by and allowing that to happen.
"We do have a protection strategy in place, which includes filing an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for interim extensions extending the life of those patents 1 year at a time for up to 5 years, which we believe will be long enough to get us through clinical trials and the regulatory approval process. The earliest the application can be filed is 6 months before the expiration of the patents, and the application can be filed up to 15 days before the expiration date. PharmaCyte can and plans to file its patent extension application between September 27, 2016, and March 12, 2017."
Can PharmaCyte apply for follow-on patents? If so, can you explain what these patents are?
"Yes. New patentable inventions related to a pharmaceutical product, also called ‘follow-on patents,’ generally encompass improvements to, or new uses for, the pharmaceutical not disclosed or suggested in the original patent. PharmaCyte anticipates extending its patent protection for its product candidates through improvements to its core technology, including:
1. New Formulations: New formulations of a known drug compound that are clinically superior to the previous drug formulation may be patentable. Developing new formulations that promote a patient’s successful therapy through such things as reduced dosing or ease of use, or that exhibit improved therapeutic outcomes or more favorable side-effect profiles, are patentable. Examples include sustained-release formulations, extended-release formulations and dosing regimens.
2. New Routes of Administration: Additional patent protection may be obtained for new formulations that permit new routes of administration.
3. New Uses: Patents directed to new uses and treatments may be obtained.
4. Combinations: Combining two or more drugs into one treatment also may be patentable.
New discoveries that may be eligible for patent protection as follow-on patents cannot be predicted at the current time; however, PharmaCyte anticipates improvements to its technology and product candidates to be generated as these product candidates move through clinical testing."
Being that PharmaCyte’s cancer product candidates are biologics, does PharmaCyte qualify for regulatory data protection and the 12 years of data exclusivity that comes with it as outlined by the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA), which was enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010?
"Yes. This is one of the two iron-clad protections that I was speaking of earlier in this article. We will be seeking this protection and the 12 years of data exclusivity it provides. ‘Reference product exclusivity’ or ‘regulatory data protection’ is an IP right available for a limited duration, which protects an innovator’s proprietary safety and efficacy data for its innovative product. This protection prevents any other party, during an exclusivity term of 12 years, from relying on the innovator’s proprietary data in order to obtain marketing approval or authorizations for a follow-on ‘biosimilar’ or generic drug product. A biosimilar product is a follow-on version of an innovator’s biological product.
"PharmaCyte’s cancer product candidates are considered biological products because the capsules that are part of those products contain living, albeit genetically altered, human cells. Biological products include a wide range of products such as vaccines, blood and blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapies, tissues and recombinant therapeutic proteins. The BPCIA created an abbreviated licensure pathway for biological products shown to be biosimilar to, or interchangeable with, an FDA-licensed biological reference product.
"The BPCIA establishes a period of 12 years of data exclusivity for reference products in order to preserve incentives for future innovation. Under this framework, data exclusivity protects the data in the innovator’s regulatory application by prohibiting others, for a period of 12 years, from gaining FDA approval based in part on reliance on or reference to the innovator’s data in their biosimilar application. PharmaCyte anticipates its 12-year exclusivity will begin as soon as the FDA approves its pancreatic cancer product candidate.
"Countries in the European Union (EU) also provide for such data protection. Further, in October 2015 it was agreed as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam that biologic drugs will be given a minimum of 5 years data exclusivity."
Can you explain how the Orphan Drug designation that PharmaCyte has received in both the United States and in the European Union is a major source of protection for PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer therapy?
"This is the second of the two protections I spoke of earlier. PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer product candidate was designated an orphan drug and listed in the official registry of medicinal products for rare diseases by the FDA on December 17, 2014. This orphan drug status assures market exclusivity for PharmaCyte in the United States for 7 years after market approval. Similarly, PharmaCyte has orphan drug status in the EU for its pancreatic cancer product candidate. This designation provides 10 years of market exclusivity in all of the countries in the EU and assistance from the EMA in the product development.
"So it should be understood that once we gain market approval, our pancreatic cancer therapy will have exclusive protections with both the regulatory data protection and the orphan drug designations. In addition, there are a number of know-how/trade secrets and trademark protections built in that we believe will make it exceedingly difficult for any company or entity to ever duplicate our pancreatic cancer therapy and complete clinical trials before we reach market approval. Conservative estimates have indicated that, given the complex nature of the trade secrets/know-how associated with our IP portfolio, we may be able to extend the protection of our IP portfolio by at least several years on this basis alone."
In addition to PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer therapy, PharmaCyte also has a diabetes therapy that it is developing that will need protecting. Can you discuss how you’ll protect the therapy that consists of Cell-in-a-Box and Melligen cells?
"PharmaCyte has a License Agreement with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia that provides PharmaCyte with an exclusive worldwide right to use genetically modified human liver cells called ‘Melligen cells.’ Those cells have been modified to contain pancreatic islet cell glucokinase for use in developing a treatment for Type 1 diabetes and insulin-dependent Type 2 diabetes. The Melligen cells are protected by a patent issued in the EU that is in the process of being validated in each of the major countries. In addition, there is a patent pending in the United States. The License Agreement also provides PharmaCyte with the non-exclusive worldwide rights to ‘know-how’ associated with the Melligen cells.
"PharmaCyte also licensed from Austrianova the exclusive, worldwide rights to use the Cell-in-a-Box cellulose-based live-cell encapsulation technology for the development of a treatment for diabetes and the use of Austrianova’s Cell-in-a-Box trademark for this technology. The diabetes Licensing Agreement grants PharmaCyte exclusive worldwide rights to use the Cell-in-a-Box technology with genetically modified or non-modified non-stem cell lines, designed to produce insulin and/or other critical components for the treatment of diabetes."
In simple terms, how would you summarize PharmaCyte’s strategy for protecting its IP portfolio?
"PharmaCyte has several diverse avenues available to it for protecting its IP portfolio. We plan to pursue all of these in order to extend our IP portfolio to the greatest extent possible."
6-K – Report of foreign issuer [Rules 13a-16 and 15d-16]
On March 15, 2016 Prima BioMed Ltd (ASX: PRR; NASDAQ: PBMD) reported that safety and immune monitoring data from an investigator-led clinical trial in melanoma using IMP321 as an adjuvant to a therapeutic vaccine has been published in the March 15 edition of the Clinical Cancer Research journal (Filing, 6-K, Prima Biomed, MAR 15, 2016, View Source [SID:1234509754]). The paper is titled "Vaccination with sLAG-3-Ig (IMP321) and peptides induces specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses in metastatic melanoma patients: report of a phase I/IIa clinical trial" and is the result of a long-standing academic collaboration between Dr. Frédéric Triebel, Prima’s Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Medical Officer and scientists at the Ludwig Centre for Cancer Research at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
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Professor Daniel Speiser, the lead investigator in the study and a key opinion leader in the research of peptide vaccines stated: "It is remarkable that serial vaccinations induced antigen specific T cell responses in all 16 vaccinated melanoma patients. We are very encouraged by the results from this second collaborative study using IMP321 as an adjuvant to boost our peptide vaccine effectiveness, which support the further development of peptide vaccines as part of a combination approach to treating cancer."
Dr. Triebel, a coauthor on the publication commented from Prima’s research laboratory in Paris: "We are very pleased to have demonstrated additional safety and immune monitoring data on IMP321 in this vaccine adjuvant setting. This is another clear demonstration of the potency of IMP321 as an antigen presenting cell (APC) activator able to boost tumor-specific T cells. The fact that the article featured in the highlights section both online and in the print publication is a great honour and recognition of the data’s scientific contribution."