Biotech Values

[dangerM]

CLSN

In short: I would not have thought it could work. I quickly read about them in the past but what I did not like was a) Chemo (I/O appears to better work with radiation due to the effects of chemo on the immune system), b) dangers of systemic reactions (which is the reason why they somehow have to contain the region where IL-12 is dosed, or rather, produced).

So the good thing is "little/no systemic circulation" ...

dose dependent increases in IL-12 and Interferon-gamma (IFN-g) levels that were predominantly in the peritoneal fluid compartment with little to no changes observed in the patients' systemic circulation.

... and if you combine with an abstract from the WCLC 2017 booklet [in a different field, in NSCLC], an increase in IFN-gamma definitely is a result in the right direction.

All else, I haven't looked deeper into the design or the results, so this is no endorsement to buy or sell (shockingly, Celsion is still a microcap)

P1.07-015 INTERFERON-GAMMA (INFG) AS A BIOMARKER TO GUIDE
IMMUNE CHECKPOINT BLOCKADE (ICB) IN CANCER THERAPY

...Among all biomarkers explored,
only INFG was associated with PFS, OS and DCR. Specifically, PFS was significantly
longer for nivolumab-treated patients with intermediate/high versus low INFG
expression (5.1 versus 2.0 months, p=0.0124). OS was longer (though not statistically
significant) for patients with intermediate/high versus low INFG expression (10.2
versus 4.9 months, p=0.0687). DCR to nivolumab was 71.43% for patients with
intermediate/high INFG versus 0% for patients with low INFG expression. Neither
PD-L1 immunohistochemistry expression nor CD8+ TILs were related to nivolumab
outcome. The same results were observed for 21 melanoma patients treated with
pembrolizumab.

Conclusion

...

IFNG production by T-cells plays critical roles in anticancer
immune responses by augmentation of MHC Class I expression, growth arrest,
post-proteasomal trimming of antigen epitopes, recruitment of effector cells, induction
of T-regs fragility and PD-L1 expression. Further research is warranted in order to
validate whether INFG is more accurate than PD-L1 ...