Collaboration formed to test efficacy of breast cancer therapy

Defence Therapeutics Inc. has announced the establishment of a collaboration with the Curie Institute to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of Accum-T-DM1 ADC in patient-derived xenograft models of breast cancer.

The agreement between Defence Therapeutics and the Curie Institute stipulates will meet the objectives of performing a head-to-head toxicology profile comparisons of T-DM1 versus Accum-T-DM1 in mice, complete a dose escalation study in mice bearing PDX that are T-DM1 resistant, and a complete breast cancer efficacy study on PDX mice undergoing the ADC therapy, including in 3 HER2+ and in 1 triple-negative PDX.

The Curie Institute

The Curie Institute is a worldwide renowned centre and leader in fundamental and applied scientific research to better serve humankind in fighting illnesses such as cancer. Their scientific team has wide expertise in the field of medical and experimental pharmacology with PDX models of cancer.

T-DM1 (Kadcyla®) is currently used to treat women with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. The efficacy of the treatment remains limited due to sub-optimal drug delivery to tumour cells resulting in some treatment resistance, recurrence, and side effects.

Sebastien Plouffe, CEO of Defence Therapeutics, said: The Accum^TM technology has been very efficient at enhancing protein-/or cell-based vaccination and ADCs potency. This studies’ objective in demonstrating enhanced efficacy and the refined treatment regimen of Accum-T-DM1, can lead to an enhanced ADC platform for the Accum^TM technology.

“This serves as a strong foundation for a panoply of other therapeutics endowed with limitations known to impairing their therapeutic potency. Accum^TM enhanced efficacy opens up a broad opportunity in the ADC market to address this.”

Currently, the T-DM1 regiment is long and tedious. The use of the Accum^TM in this context is expected to significantly increase the efficiency as well as to lower the treatment cycle, which would highly lower the side effects triggered by the current ADC therapies.

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