OncoMed Begins Third Pancreatic Cancer Trial

OncoMed Pharmaceuticals has started a Phase Ib trial of its first-in-class Wnt-pathway-targeting antibody vantictumab (OMP-18R5) in combination with nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) and gemcitabine in patients with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. This trial is the third of three Phase Ib trials for vantictumab initiated this year as part of OncoMed’s collaboration with Bayer Pharma AG.

The multi-center trial is a dose-escalation study that will evaluate safety of vantictumab in combination with Abraxane and gemcitabine and determine a recommended Phase II dose for this combination regimen. Key secondary and exploratory objectives include evaluation of the pharmacokinetics (PK) of vantictumab, as well as the pharmacodynamics (PD) and efficacy of this combination. Tumor tissue from patients will be used to explore predictive biomarker hypotheses related to the efficacy of vantictumab.

Vantictumab plus docetaxel is being evaluated in non-small cell lung cancer and vantictumab combined paclitaxel is being studied in Her2-negative breast cancer. Interim results for the single-agent first-in-human Phase Ia trial for vantictumab in solid tumor patients were recently reported at the 2013 European Cancer Congress (ECC 2013) in Amsterdam, NL in September 2013. Results from that study showed that vantictumab is well tolerated with early evidence of single-agent activity. Additionally, clinical biomarker data from the Phase Ia trial indicating PD modulation of the Wnt pathway by vantictumab were presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in October 2013.