InvestorsHub Logo
Followers 251
Posts 17854
Boards Moderated 0
Alias Born 01/19/2006

Re: $heff post# 95667

Thursday, 12/01/2016 2:53:31 AM

Thursday, December 01, 2016 2:53:31 AM

Post# of 97237
HTBX: Another trial report yet to come next week. Room for a bounce?

"Heat Biologics Presents Topline HS-410 Phase 2 Bladder Cancer Results at the Society of Urological Oncology Annual Meeting


Heat Biologics, Inc. (Nasdaq:HTBX), a leader in the development of gp96-based immunotherapies that are designed to activate a patient’s immune system to fight cancer, announced that it presented topline data from its 94-patient Phase II trial evaluating HS-410 (vesigenurtacel-L) in combination with standard of care, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), or as a monotherapy, for the treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, at the Society of Urologic Oncology Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX.
In the poster, “Top-Line Results from Vesigenurtacel-L (HS-410) in Combination with BCG from a Randomized, Blinded Phase 2 Trial in Patients with Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC),” researchers reported that there were encouraging signs of anti-tumor activity as HS-410 generated a robust antigen-specific immune response to multiple tumor-associated peptides in treated patients, while there were no immune responses of this type in the placebo. However, these responses did not translate into clinical outcomes, and there was no statistically significant difference in the primary endpoint (proportion of recurrence-free survival at one year) between the vaccine and placebo arms of the trial. To better assess the durability of the positive immunological responses, and in keeping with clinical trial guidance recently issued by International Bladder Cancer Group (“IBCG”)1 recommending a 2-year study duration for NMIBC trials, Heat will continue to monitor all patients enrolled in the study for an additional 12 months. At that time, Heat will make a final determination whether to progress its bladder cancer program into a Phase 3 trial.

“The ability of HS-410 to prime T-cells suggests a strong signal that the vaccine is having an impact, as well as an opportunity to improve responses, in this challenging disease,” said study principal investigator, Gary Steinberg, M.D., The Bruce and Beth White Family Professor of Surgery and Director of Urologic Oncology at the University of Chicago. “Historically, NMIBC has been very difficult to treat, with BCG being the only approved therapy in the past 40 years. We were surprised to see that all arms of this trial performed much better than historical control, which is a testament to improvements in standard of care, and validates our choice to run a controlled clinical trial. We look forward to continuing to monitor patients in this trial, per IBCG recommendations. and would like to thank the many patients and their families for the commitment to this trial and advancement of the treatment of bladder cancer.”

“We were pleased to see a robust antigen-specific immune response, reinforcing our earlier clinical data,” Jeff Wolf, CEO of Heat Biologics, commented. “Even though we did not achieve our desired clinical outcomes, we are encouraged by the results and believe this, and other combination therapies, have the potential to improve long-term outcomes. In particular, Heat’s ComPACT technology, combining a therapeutic vaccine with an immune co-stimulator in a single product, was designed to substantially improve immune response durability. We are actively pursuing new programs to complement our existing platforms, which we expect to announce in early 2017. Moreover, we look forward to examining the additional top-line data that will be reported next week for our combination trial of HS-110 with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo® (nivolumab) in lung cancer.”

“HS-410 stimulated antigen-specific immune responses to multiple tumor-associated peptides,” commented Taylor Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer. “The kinetics of these responses indicate efficient priming of CD8+ T cells, consistent with results seen in other Heat Biologics clinical trials. Remaining analyses are in progress to inform future development of other agents and/or combinations aimed at improving immune response durability. Further understanding of the secondary and exploratory endpoints will advise future development steps.”

“We conducted a cost-efficient trial and will continue to gather important data with minimal ongoing costs,” Mr. Wolf added. “We have maintained a solid balance sheet and intend to continue to be very prudent in managing our expenses as we generate additional clinical data and progress our programs and platforms."

Additionally, Heat will be presenting topline data on its non-small cell lung cancer study of HS-110 in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo® (nivolumab) at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer Annual Meeting in Vienna, Austria, on December 6th. The presentation, “Viagenpumatucel-L Bolsters Response to Nivolumab Therapy in Advanced Lung Adenocarcinoma: Preliminary Data from the DURGA Trial” will occur on December 6, 2016, 8:56 AM EST (14:56 CET). Following this data release, Heat plans to hold an investor call on December 8th to discuss its overall clinical strategy moving forward."

1

Join the InvestorsHub Community

Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.