There was an up-and-coming medical firm which received glorious news –something to be thankful for – as U.S. Thanksgiving Day rolled in.
On Monday, Bethesda, Maryland-based Northwest Biotherapeutics (OTCQB:NWBO) announced that updated blinded interim data from the Phase 3 trial of DCVax®-L for Glioblastoma brain cancer were presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology.
The updated data through October 2018 have continued to mature since the prior interim data collection in March 2017, and indicate encouraging patient survival.
Northwest is a company engaged in developing DCVax® personalized immune therapies for solid tumor cancers.
The trial remains a blinded one, and all of the interim data are on a blinded basis (treatment arm and control arm combined). A total of 331 patients were enrolled in the trial
Patients are continuing to move through time points based on their length of time in the trial. All of the patients were past the one-year time point at the time of the 2017 interim data collection, and most of the patients were past the two-year time point.
The further maturation of the data from March 2017 through October 2018 has provided an opportunity for more patients to reach later time points (three years and beyond), and enabled a more developed picture of the "long tail" of the survival curve to emerge. The long tail is a key focus with immune therapies.
The demographics of the top 100 patients are somewhat more favorable than those of the whole 331-patient ITT population in the trial, but are not greatly more favorable.
CEO Linda Powers commented, "We believe it is now appropriate for the Company to move forward with the several stages of work that are needed to reach completion of this trial program, despite the fact that there are good arguments for allowing the data to mature even further."
Stocks traveled higher by 2.25 cents, or 9.1%, to 27 cents, on volume surpassing six million shares.
