Last month we discussed the fact that Immunocellular Therapeutics could be a company that is priming itself to usher in the next generation of cancer immunotherapeutic
treatments, with Dendreon (
DNDN) being the obvious leader of the
"now" generation.
The reason behind this claim is centered on the company's next-level cancer immunotherapeutic technology which is currently being tested in clinical trials. Today's model of cancer immunotherapy has treatments
training one's
immune system to combat a patient's cancerous cells, but IMUC takes this philosophy a step further by targeting the stem cells that eventually lead to the growth and spreading of a cancer.
This strategy was put to the test in a Phase I trial for
glioblastoma (GBM), a very agressive form of
brain cancer,where 100% of the 16 patients administered Immunocellular's ICT-107 were still alive after one year, and 80% after two.
Those results were encouraging enough to warrant a quick transition to a Phase II trial, which started earlier this year. Full enrollment of the trial is expected to be reached early in 2012, with full results due out the following year.
Originally planned for just 15 sites, the company
announced last month that more than 20 sites will become available for enrollment in this trial.
In another bit of encouraging news, Immunocellular went back and took a look a longer term, follow-up look at the Phase I results. In that review, the company
announced that:
"The data show 6 out of 16 (37.6%) newly diagnosed patients who received ICT-107 continue to show no tumor recurrence, with 3 of these patients (18.8%) remaining disease –free for almost four years while the other 3 patients have gone more than two and a half years disease-free. No new patients have shown disease recurrence since the last report of data in September, 2010.