Anixa Biosciences, a biotechnology company focused on the treatment and prevention of cancer, today announced that, in partnership with Moffitt Cancer Center, it has completed treatment of the first patient cohort in the ongoing clinical trial of Anixa’s novel chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy for ovarian cancer.
All three patients in the first cohort received the same dose of engineered T-cells, with no dose-limiting toxicities observed. Following the requisite wait time after the last patient was dosed, a comprehensive review of the safety data from this cohort, and confirmation that it is safe to escalate, the trial will begin enrolling patients in the second dose cohort immediately. Patients enrolled in this second cohort will receive three times the cell dose compared to the first cohort.
Dr. Amit Kumar, Chairman and CEO of Anixa Biosciences, stated, “We are pleased with the positive safety data from the first cohort and look forward to advancing to the next higher dose cohort. We hope to continue observing good safety results as we continue to increase dosage, and eventually objective efficacy data.”
The study (NCT05316129), which is being conducted at Moffitt Cancer Center, is a dose-escalation Phase 1 trial to evaluate the therapy’s safety; determine the maximum tolerated dose of T-cells targeting the follicle stimulating hormone receptor (FSHR); and preliminarily assess clinical activity. All patients being enrolled in the trial have disease that is progressing and have failed at least two, but often more, therapeutic interventions.
Dr. Robert Wenham, the Principal Investigator of the trial, and the Head of Gynecological Oncology at Moffitt stated, “We are very pleased with the results to date. The first three patients were dosed through a peritoneal catheter and no patient has had a dose-limiting toxicity. Since most lesions in ovarian cancer are within the peritoneum, we hope the delivered CAR-T cells remain localized and active in the vicinity of the tumors. It’s possible that we may see very limited side effects due to this local, as opposed to systemic, delivery. The very selective target also gives us reason to hope that on-target, off-tumor effects will not be prevalent as in other solid tumor studies. Perhaps this delivery approach may enhance efficacy as well. However, we will also test this therapy by intravenous administration, in patients for whom peritoneal administration is not possible.”
The CAR-T approach used for Anixa’s therapy is known as chimeric endocrine receptor T-cell (CER-T) since the target of the engineered T-cells is an endocrine receptor. While CAR-T therapy has shown efficacy in some hematological tumors, reproducing the same results with solid tumors, such as ovarian cancer, has proven challenging. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that effective CAR-T therapy needs to attack a specific antigen present only on targeted cells to avoid negatively affecting healthy cells. The cell therapy being evaluated in Anixa’s Phase 1 study differs from traditional CAR-T therapy in that it targets the FSHR, which research indicates is exclusively expressed on ovarian cells in healthy adult females.
