Theratechnologies Announces New Positive Results for two Investigational Peptide-Drug Conjugates Targeting Sortilin Positive Ovarian Cancer

TH1902 and TH1904 more effective and safer in vivo compared to current standard ovarian cancer treatments

New data presented during the AACR Virtual Annual Meeting

MONTREAL, April 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Theratechnologies Inc. (Theratechnologies) (TSX: TH) (NASDAQ: THTX), a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, today announced that new positive results about its two investigational peptide-drug conjugates (PDC) TH1902 and TH1904 will be presented tomorrow during an oral presentation at a virtual session of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

Data from the oral presentation “Increasing potency of anticancer drugs through Sortilin receptor-mediated cancer therapy: A new targeted approach for the treatment of ovarian cancer,” show that both TH1902 (docetaxel peptide conjugate) and TH1904 (doxorubicin peptide conjugate), two unique Sortilin positive (SORT1+) targeting investigational PDCs, are more effective and better tolerated in animal models than two commonly-used ovarian cancer treatments.

In vivo results obtained with TH1902 and TH1904 demonstrate a high accumulation of the conjugates in ovarian tumors with low accumulation in healthy ovary tissue. Compared to treatments using doxorubicin or docetaxel, two commonly used treatments for ovarian cancer, TH1902 and TH1904 were both found to have better efficacy, at equivalent dose, while not inducing weight loss nor decreasing lymphocytes, two common side effects observed with current treatments.

“This data is particularly interesting as it shows that TH1902 has significant activity in more than one type of cancer, thus opening the door to making TH1902 our lead PDC and to test it in a number of SORT1+ cancers. TH1902 has already demonstrated activity in vivo for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. We now realize that it could become a potent and well-tolerated weapon in the fight against ovarian cancer as much as TH1904,” said Dr. Christian Marsolais, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Theratechnologies.

“These new results further support the great potential of our PDCs as a unique and effective vehicle for the treatment of many types of cancers in which SORT1 receptors are overexpressed. The high specificity of our PDCs could translate to significantly better efficacy and tolerability,” added Dr. Marsolais.

About Theratechnologies’ SORT1+ technology
Theratechnologies has developed a peptide which specifically targets Sortilin 1 (SORT1) receptor. It was discovered that SORT1 is overexpressed in ovarian, triple-negative breast, skin, lung, colorectal and pancreatic cancers, among others. SORT1 plays a significant role in protein internalization, sorting and trafficking, making it an attractive target for drug development.