April 17, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Shares of OncoMed Pharmaceuticals are down more than 18 percent this morning after the company announced its mid-stage combination lung cancer treatment failed to meet endpoints.
OncoMed said tarextumab (anti-Notch2/3, OMP-59R5) in combination with etoposide and a chemotherapy drug to treat patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer showed results that were “undifferentiated from those of chemotherapy plus placebo.” As a result, the company said the trial did not meet primary endpoints of progression-free survival, nor secondary endpoints of overall survival. The median progression-free survival for tarextumab plus chemotherapy was 5.6 months versus 5.5 months for chemotherapy plus placebo. Overall response rates were 68.5 percent and 70.8 percent in the tarextumab and placebo arms respectively, the company said.
Tarextumab (anti-Notch2/3, OMP-59R5) is a fully human monoclonal antibody that targets the Notch2 and Notch3 receptors. The drug is part of OncoMed’s collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline .
Small cell lung cancer is expected to make up between 10 and 15 percent of the 224,390 newly diagnosed lung cancer cases and the 158,080 deaths estimated to occur in the U.S. Current standard of care in treating small cell lung cancer is the chemotherapeutic etoposide in combination with either cisplatin or carboplatin.
“Small cell lung cancer is a very difficult-to-treat disease and unfortunately, tarextumab did not show benefit over placebo in this Phase 2 trial,” Paul Hastings, OncoMed’s chairman and chief executive officer said in a statement.
Additionally, OncoMed said it will discontinue enrollment in the Phase 1b clinical trial of brontictuzumab (anti-Notch1, OMP-52M51) in combination with trifluridine/tipiracil (Lonsur) in third-line colorectal cancer patients. The combination of brontictuzumab plus chemotherapy was not tolerable in this patient population.
April has not been kind to OncoMed. On April 10, the company announced its partnership with Bayer to develop two drugs, vantictumab and ipafricept, both Wnt pathway inhibitors, had ended due to “strategic reasons.” With Bayer’s withdrawal, OncoMed retains worldwide rights to both drugs.
Also on April 10, the company announced it was terminating a Phase II trial testing demcizumab in combination with Abraxane as a first-line treatment in metastic pancreatic cancer after the drug failed to meet endpoints.
Due to the events announced today and last week, Hastings said the company will undergo an immediate comprehensive portfolio prioritization review.
“The immediate task ahead is to thoroughly examine the available data, our resources and the opportunities to re-focus our efforts. We ended the first quarter of 2017 with $156.9 million in cash and short-term investments,” Hastings said.
