OncoSec Medical Inc (ONCSQ)

[hschlauch]

On April 19, 2016 Oncosec delivered unanticipated news about its monotherapy trial follow up at the 2016 AACR in New Orleans. At progressive disease, there were 75% of patients (6/8) who went straight from intatumoral pIL-12 to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy and responded. Out of those 6 who responded, 4 of them were complete responders - that is 50% of the patients who went directly to the anti-PD-1/-PD-L1 therapy! That simply never happens with anti-PD-1 drugs; typically less than 9% turn out to be complete responders following monotherapy pembrolizumab, nivolumab, etc.

Why do I think they observed those responses immediately following progressive disease on Immunopulse IL-12? The intratumoral pIL-12 delivered via electroporation elevates local interferon gamma. In doing so, it drives immunity. However, it is a double edged sword because while driving immunity it is also upregulating PD-1 and CTLA-4 phenotypes on CD8 T-cells and increasing PD-L1 on tumor cells. This creates the 'substrate' that allows the anti-PD-1/-PD-L1 to work effectively. Without those exhausted T-cell phenotypes present to begin with, pembrolizumab, nivolumab, etc wouldn't be all that effective.

So why bring this up?

In two days, we will have another follow up to the monotherapy data, this time with n=51.