BOTHELL — Biotech firm OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals came into the year with high hopes for its cancer-fighting drug custirsen, a drug that targets protective proteins produced by tumors.
The first results were a setback.
The company announced last week that Phase 3 testing found an increase in life for prostate cancer patients, but the increase was deemed not statistically significant.
It’s a surprise for Scott Cormack, OncoGenex’s CEO and president. Phase 2 testing found a much better survival rate for patients.
“The outcome for this trial is obviously quite different,” Cormack said.
Stock for OncoGenex was trading at $9.70 cent a share at the close of business before the news. It fell to $3.85 cents a share at the end of the day the findings were released on April 28.
While it’s a blow to the company, Cormack said that it’s just one of three tests for custirsen and one of 10 clinical tests for cancer drugs being pursued by the company.
And there remains questions why custirsen performed so well in one round of testing and so poorly in another.
“So the focus now is trying to get a handle on why is this trial so different,” Cormack said.
OncoGenex, which has about 40 employees and is based in Bothell, was developing custirsen and other drugs discovered at the Vancouver Prostate Centre in Vancouver, B.C. The idea behind the drugs is to create medicine that wipes out proteins produced by tumors to protect cancerous cells.
Usually, drugmakers are looking for new ways of killing cancer. OncoGenex reasons that if a drug can weaken a cancerous cell’s defenses, then chemotherapy and other more traditional methods of treatment can be more effective.
For custirsen, the company, which is partnering with Teva Pharmaceuticals, was focusing on prostate and lung cancers. The company first started developing the drug in 1997-98 and started initial clinical trials in 2001.
The goal with new cancer treatments is to prolong life for at least two months or longer. The idea is that a combination of therapies can prolong a patient’s life from months to years.
Phase 3 testing is the final stage before a new drug can go to market. During this testing for custirsen, one group of patients with prostate cancer was given chemotherapy and the other was given chemotherapy and custirsen. The study found the patients with custirsen saw a median survival rate increased to 1.2 months.
Phase 2 testing saw a median survival rate increase of 6.9 months.
It’s putting the company into a fact-finding mission. OncoGenex and Teva need to analyze all the results to understand what happened. They also want to look at what treatments patients have received after the study that may have impacted the testing.
Three new treatments were approved while the study was ongoing, Cormack said. Could those have had an impact on the results?
Cormack said they still believe that this method of fighting cancer will prove fruitful. Custirsen will be tested on other prostate cancer patients and non-small cell lung cancer.
The company is undergoing seven Phase 2 trials of another drug called apatorsen in four tumor types.
“We still feel good about the potential for these other trials,” Cormack said.
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