Noxopharm Expands LuPIN Trial On Promising Interim Results That Relate To Veyonda^®

Clinical-Stage drug development company, Noxopharm Limited (ASX:NOX) has announced a notable expansion of its investigator-initiated trial, LuPIN, at the back of encouraging interim results observed to date in LuPIN trial Veyonda^® (NOX66) dose-finding study.

In the announcement dated 23 May 2019, Noxopharm unveiled the decision to recruit an additional 24 patients in its ongoing LuPIN trial, in addition to the initial 32 patients enrolled to date. The additional dose cohort will comprise 24 patients who will reportedly be treated with Veyonda^® 1200 mg daily for 10 days in combination with ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617.

As indicated by NOX, the LuPIN study led by Associate Professor Louise Emmett at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, focuses on evaluating Veyonda^® for its potential ability to increase the rate of response and the durability of responses to Lutetium-177 (¹⁷⁷Lu) labelled PSMA-617 (referred to as ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617) in men with late-stage metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 is an experimental radiopharmaceutical therapy that has the ability to reach prostate cancer cells throughout the body and to deliver radiotherapy in a highly targeted way.

Expansion of Noxopharm’s LuPIN trial by additional 24 patients

Noxopharm’s decision to proceed with the trial expansion is placed on the company’s objective to evaluate whether the dose-response effect observed to date will lead to even greater response rates. It underlines the company’s core objective to bring Veyonda^® to market as a versatile adjunct to radiotherapy in prostate cancer.

Dr. Greg van Wyk, CEO and CMO of Noxopharm, stated that support of St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, a leader in the field of theranostics, to Noxopharm’s trial expansion plan represents a big step forward in its efforts to establish Veyonda^® as a standard co-treatment with radiotherapy in prostate cancer.

He added that Veyonda^® 1200 mg has proven to be well tolerated in combination with external beam radiotherapy, similar to the combination of Veyonda^® 800 mg and ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 in the LuPIN trial to-date.

Under the trial, first 8 eight men received 400 mg of Veyonda^® daily (on days 1-10 of each cycle). The dose for next 9-16 patients was escalated to 800 mg of Veyonda^® following a safety data review. Post completion of the next safety data review of these 9-16 patients, a set of another 16 patients was recruited for administering the same dose of 800 mg of Veyonda^®.

The LuPIN-1 trial will now enrol a further 24 patients (with progressing mCRPC despite having received cabazitaxel, docetaxel, and either abiraterone or enzalutamide), who will be given Veyonda^® 1200 mg daily for 10 days in combination ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617. The trial aims to administer the patients up to 6 cycles of ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 at six-weekly intervals in combination with Veyonda^®.

Associate Professor Louise Emmett, Director of Theranostics and Nuclear Medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, stated: “The nominal difference in response rates between Veyonda^® 400 mg and Veyonda^® 800 mg encouraged us to explore the dose effect more robustly by adding a 1200 mg cohort.”

The recently released announcement of interim trial results presented an overall prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response rate of 69% across the first 16 patients with mCRPC, with the generally tolerable and safe treatment to date using Veyonda^® in combination with ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617.

The encouraging results materialising from the LuPIN trial are expected to lay the foundations for a pivotal Phase II/III registration trial, which has a potential to see Veyonda^® becoming a standard of care adjunct to ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617.

NOX has indicated that the interim results from LuPIN trial Veyonda^® (NOX66) dose-finding study will be presented in an oral presentation by Associate Professor Emmett at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2019 Annual Meeting, due to be held on 25 June 2019.

NOX is trading at $0.610 as on 27 May 2019 (12:38 PM AEST). The stock’s year-to-date return stands strong at +48.78%, with a surge of 22% recorded in the past six months.

Also Read: Looking through the business model of Noxopharm Limited

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