Scancell to develop ImmunoBody lung cancer treatment

Cancer immunotherapy development company Scancell Holdings announced on Monday its intention to develop its SCIB2 ImmunoBody for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor.

The AIM-traded firm’s board approved the decision based on the outstanding results from the SCIB1 melanoma clinical trial, which extended several years beyond the original completion date due to the unexpectedly long survival times.

Planning for Phase I/II clinical trials in NSCLC is currently underway, it said.

The latest data on SCIB2 was recently published in the OncoImmunology journal, confirming that SCIB2 induced potent antitumour immunity which was further enhanced by checkpoint blockade.

“Our clinical experience with the first ImmunoBody, SCIB1, in the melanoma setting will greatly facilitate planning and execution of our planned lung cancer clinical trials with SCIB2,” said Scancell chief scientific officer, Professor Lindy Durrant.

“We believe that success with this clinical programme will highlight that ImmunoBody has the potential to be applicable to cancers with very different characteristics and underlying genetics.”

Dr Richard Goodfellow, CEO of Scancell, said it is widely recognised that the successful exploitation of novel therapeutic mechanisms, such as the ImmunoBody platform, will be critical to further improving the poor mortality rates of patients with lung cancer.

“The data we have generated to date with the SCIB2 ImmunoBody suggest that it should be well tolerated and be an ideal complement to existing and emerging portfolios of checkpoint inhibitor therapies in the treatment of NSCLC.”