New data from IMM-101 clinical trial shows improved survival in metastatic pancreatic cancer

Updated results from the IMAGE 1 phase II clinical trial evaluating a combination of IMM-101 and gemcitabine as first-line treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer found that IMM-101 was associated with improving survival at 12 months to 24% versus 11.5% in patients receiving gemcitabine alone.

The results, presented to the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) ((Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting (May 29 – June 2, 2015).
Vol 33, No 15_suppl (May 20 Supplement), 2015: 3051)) annual meeting earlier this month, also showed that at 18 months this survival probability was amplified to 18.3% for IMM-101 treated patients compared to 2.3% in the control group.

IMM-101 is a bacterially derived systemic immunomodulator (a substance that helps module the immune system) which, during the clinical trial, was randomly assigned to patients alongside gemcitabine in a 2:1 ratio while the control group received gemcitabine alone.

While the study recruited patients of differing stages of pancreatic cancer, it was the metastatic sub group which saw the most progress. At the time of the cut-off date of 25th April 2015, eight of the 11 of the sub-study group which were treated with IMM-101 had survived for at least 18 months with the then maximum treatment length with IMM-101 being 37 months. As some patients in the sub group showed a durable response (longer-term), identifying those patients will be the work of ongoing biomarker research to enable targeted treatment for those likely to respond better.

A larger, Phase III trial is currently in development to verify these results and researchers hope this will be open before the end of this year (2015).