Advancements in prostate cancer therapies have been painfully slow of the years. Surgery, radioactive seeds and hormone therapy remain the most common tactics to fight the disease. As for drugs, docetaxel (taxotere) has been around for more than a decade and is often used in combination with other treatments.
According to the National Cancer Institute, there are a total of 26 FDA-approved drugs for prostate cancer, yet it remains a leading cause of cancer death for men each year.
OncBioMune Pharmaceuticals (OTCQB:OBMP) hopes to change the prostate cancer treatment paradigm with its novel therapeutic cancer vaccine called ProscaVax. The Baton Rouge-based biotech has for the last couple months been delivering data from a successfully completed early-stage study of 20 prostate cancer patients with rising PSA (prostate specific antigen), a sign that the disease is coming back following other treatments.
ProscaVax is an immunotherapy, meaning it harnesses the power of the immune system to fight prostate cancer. It accomplishes this by combining prostate cancer-associated PSA with two biological adjuvants (interleukin-2 and GM-CSF) to elicit t a response from the immune system directed towards the cancerous cells.
On Monday, OncBioMune released the latest results from a phase 1 study, showing the 80% (16 out of 20) of the patients treated with ProscaVax in the study had their prostate cancer stabilize/stop progressing at 19 weeks post-therapy.
The data was consistent with previous data showing 12 of 15 patients exhibited and increased immune response and nine of 14 patients showed improvements in PSA doubling times. It's early research and a small sample size, but OncBioMune is moving into mid-stage trials with larger patient numbers to lend more validation that their vaccine is safe and effective.
The company is looking to bring a better option for patients in need compared to drugs like docetaxel, an intravenously-administered drug that requires one-hour infusions every three weeks along with the steroid prednisone twice daily for 10 cycles. The 80% response rate from a simple shot like ProscaVax is reason to be optimistic about advanced clinical studies and likely will catch the attention of big pharma should the data continue to impress.
Shares of OBMP are trading flat at seven cents in Monday action, as they look to break a resistance at that point and keeping climbing off a bottom at five cents hit in mid-October.
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