Immunicum Announces Encouraging Signs of Survival Benefit in Phase II MERECA Trial of Ilixadencel in Kidney Cancer - Seite 2

The corporate presentation, which contains the updated survival results and survival curves, is available on Immunicum’s website: https://immunicum.se/

About MERECA
MERECA was an exploratory, international, randomized, controlled and open-label Phase II clinical trial in which a total of 88 newly diagnosed, intermediate and poor risk metastatic renal cancer patients were enrolled. Based on a 2-to-1 randomization, patients received either two intratumoral doses of ilixadencel before nephrectomy (surgical removal of the tumor-affected kidney) and subsequent treatment with sunitinib or sunitinib therapy alone post-nephrectomy. The primary objectives of the study are to evaluate median OS and 18-months survival rates. Secondary objectives include evaluation of safety and tolerability, tumor response and immunological profiling including T cell infiltration.

About renal cell cancer / carcinoma
There are approximately 273,000 new cases of Renal Cell Cancer diagnosed worldwide each year, representing approximately two percent of all cancers. The therapeutic effect of targeted therapies has often been of short duration, but therapeutic combinations with novel immunotherapies called checkpoint inhibitors have led to recent approvals due to the increased tumor response and survival duration. There remains a relatively large unsatisfied medical need for new treatments that lead to deeper and more durable responses, and have less unwanted side effects.

About ilixadencel
Ilixadencel is an off-the-shelf cell-based cancer immunotherapy developed for the treatment of solid tumors. Its active ingredient is activated allogeneic dendritic cells, derived from healthy blood donors. Injection of these cells in the patient’s tumor generates an inflammatory response which in turns leads to tumor-specific activation of the patient’s cytotoxic T cells. To-date ilixadencel has been tested in a range of clinical trials in various solid tumor indications including metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma (mRCC), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) and in combination with several standard-of-care cancer therapies such as the tyrosine kinase inhibitors Sutent (sunitinib) and Stivarga (regorafenib), and the checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab). Ilixadencel has consistently maintained a positive safety and tolerability profile and demonstrated initial signs of efficacy as seen in the randomized Phase II MERECA trial.