AustCancer cheered by survival study

Australian Cancer Technology has reaped quick rewards and impressed shareholders with a drug it licensed in September last year, which has doubled the survival rate of patient with pancreatic cancer in a Phase I/II study conducted in Germany.

AustCancer CEO Paul Hopper -- now based in the company's new offices in San Diego -- described the results as "fantastic". "With pancreatic cancer, survival really is the critical thing," he said. "It's 13 patients so it's not a huge trial -- but [the results] are not marginally better, they are quite significantly better."

The drug, RP101, is targeted at preventing cells from developing resistance to chemotherapy. Of the 13 patients with metastasised pancreatic cancer who were treated with RP101 in conjunction with chemotherapeutics gemcitabine and cisplatin, 10 lived longer than one year, and six of them are still alive. Overall, the co-therapy increased the patients' probablility of survival from an average of 7.5 months to an average of 15 months.

The drug down-regulates the oncogene STAT3 which is over-expressed in pancreatic cancer. It also down-regulates DNA-repair gene APEX, implicated in chemoresistance.

AustCancer -- soon to change its name to Avantogen to reflect its increasing US focus -- holds the North American rights for the development of RP101, which it licensed from German company RESprotect.

The first trial [with RP101] was in 32 patients and pancreatic patients came up particularly well," said Hopper. "In preparation to go into what we hope will be a pivotal trial we've commenced a dose-finding study in three centres with 22 patients. We've already enrolled four people and that study will finish in July."

AustCancer is planning a 130-patient Phase IIb/III trial in the US in September or October, comparing the RP101-gemcitabine co-therapy with gemcitabine and a placebo.

At time of writing, shares in AustCancer were up 9 per cent to $0.33.