Promising early results for Activartis' AV0113 in glioblastoma

Privately-held Austrian company Activartis has developed a novel patented cancer immunotherapy concept, AV0113, based on dendritic cells (DC). While DCs have already demonstrated their potential in cancer immunotherapy, the novel feature of AV0113 is that exposure to bacterial endotoxins enables the DC to prime type 1 T helper cells, which support cytolytic anti-tumor immune responses. This is comparable to conjugated vaccines, which are a more artificial way to modulate the features of an immune response.

At the beginning of 2013, Activartis completed recruitment of around 100 brain cancer patients for a multicenter, randomized, Phase II clinical trial. This study aims to deliver safety and efficacy data for the first time. Early results do not exhibit an improvement in progression-free survival, but overall survival seems to clearly favor Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients.

The European Medicines Agency recently awarded Activartis an Orphan Drug Designation for its innovative cancer immune therapy AV0113 (The Pharma Letter March 7). The orphan designation applies specifically to the use of AV0113 for the treatment of glioma, a type of brain tumour, which afflicts around one in 10,000 people in the European Union.