On October 17, 2019 Hutchison China MediTech Limited ("Chi-Med") (AIM/Nasdaq: HCM) reported the publication of results from the Phase II VIKTORY (targeted agent eValuation In gastric cancer basKeT KORea studY) trial in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association of Cancer Research1 (Press release, Hutchison China MediTech, OCT 17, 2019, View Source [SID1234542329]). The principal study investigator was Dr. Jeeyun Lee, Associate Professor at the Division of Hematology-Oncology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
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The research article titled "Tumor Genomic Profiling Guides Patients with Metastatic Gastric Cancer to Targeted Treatment: The VIKTORY Umbrella Trial" in the October 2019 issue of Cancer Discovery details the VIKTORY study, which was designed to classify patients with metastatic gastric cancer based on clinical sequencing and focused on eight different biomarker groups, including MET amplification, to assign patients to one of the 10 associated clinical trials in second-line treatment.
Dr. Lee and colleagues classified 772 patients with gastric cancer and successfully sequenced 715 patients (92.6%). Based on this sequencing, MET amplification was observed in 3.5% of patients (25/715). Of the 10 associated clinical trials under the VIKTORY umbrella, the highest objective response rate ("ORR") was observed in the MET amplification savolitinib monotherapy trial, which reported an ORR of 50% (10/20, 95% CI: 28.0 – 71.9). Dr. Lee and colleagues concluded that the savolitinib monotherapy trial also met the pre-specified 6-week progression free survival rate, indicating that it is worthy of further exploration in the MET amplification subset of patients with gastric cancer.
Gastric cancer was the third leading cause of cancer related mortality in 2018, causing 783,000 deaths worldwide. The prognosis of patients with metastatic gastric cancer remains extremely poor, with a median overall survival of less than 12 months with cytotoxic chemotherapy.
1 Jeeyun Lee, Seung Tae Kim et al. Tumor Genomic Profiling Guides Patients with Metastatic Gastric Cancer to Targeted Treatment: The VIKTORY Umbrella Trial. Cancer Discov October 1 2019 (9) (10) 1388-1405; DOI: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-19-0442.
About Savolitinib
Savolitinib is a potential first-in-class inhibitor of MET, an enzyme which has been shown to function abnormally in many types of solid tumors. Chi-Med designed savolitinib to be a potent and highly selective oral inhibitor, which, through chemical structure modification, addresses human metabolite-related renal toxicity, the primary issue that halted development of several other selective MET inhibitors. In clinical studies to date, involving over 900 patients, savolitinib has shown promising signs of clinical efficacy in patients with MET gene alterations in multiple tumor types with an acceptable safety profile. Chi-Med is currently testing savolitinib in partnership with AstraZeneca in Phase Ib/II studies, in multiple solid tumor indications, both as a monotherapy and in combinations.