Boston, MA 06/05/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) presented findings from two clinical trials on Talimogene laherparepvec at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which was held in Chicago.
The two clinical trials with the drug, which is a novel investigational drug employed in oncolytic immunotherapy involved evaluating the drug as a single agent as well as in a combination regime on patients suffering from metastatic melanoma. The combination study is in Phase 1b and data collected from the trials involved studying 19 patients. The findings were presented for the first time at the Society and demonstrated non dosage limiting toxicity of the drug when used in combination with ipilimumab. According to the evaluations marking the use of the drug before or on combination to ipilimumab, tumor sizes were observed to either shrink or completely rendered undetectable in as much as 56% of the treated patients. However, side effects including fatigue, chill, rash and fever were noticed in some patients.
Potential Therapy
The M.D. and Executive Vice President of Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN)’s Research and Development unit, Sean E. Harper, said that the present era is witnessing novel melanoma treatments. He said that Talimogene laherparepvec has showed the capability of generating persistent and complete responses in metastatic melanoma sufferers. The company could look forward to enter a filing with this basis this year, he commented because the drug demonstrates potential treatment option for the devastating disease.
Complete Response
Apart from this, the Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN)’s Phase 3 study achieved success in reaching the primary endpoint while demonstrating observable improvement in persistent response rate. As many as 26% patients involved in the Talimogene laherparepvec arm achieved an overall significant response and 40% of these demonstrated complete eradication of the disease that is they showed a complete response. The findings proved that among all the responders of the drug, probably 65% of the responses can last for at least a year.
