Replies to post #27652 on Marker Therapeutics Inc (MRKR)

[4fatcat4]

Thanks for your take on the results. This strikes close to home for me as my mom died from pancreatic cancer, being 76 years old she was told she most likely wouldn't survive the terrible side effects of chemo, and that treatments most likely wouldn't prolong her life in any case. A horrible choice to make, treatments that would make life miserable and probably kill you with little hope of success or live your last days in relative comfort waiting for a miracle. She chose the latter and survived for a few months before dying but she never gave up hope something would be developed that could give her hope of living.

As far as I can tell, MRKR gives people suffering from this terrible cancer a different path, at the very least hope thru treatments that wouldn't make their last days not worth living. Appears that MRKR could possibly be combined with other drugs to at the very least give hope that the cancer could be successfully treated, just a chance of survival that is not presently available without the terrible side effects of chemo. That's all my mom wanted and waited for, but the miracle of what MRKR presents came too late.

[DesireToLearn]

I have a slightly different understanding of Arm A, or maybe we're saying the same and I just misread. MultiTAA was applied after 3 months of chemo, which is the typical response period for chemo. Then when they applied MultiTAA and responses occurred.

Arm A: This arm was designed to evaluate the safety and potential efficacy of using MultiTAA cells as part of first-line treatment for patients with pancreatic cancer. These patients in the chemo-responsive arm have completed or will complete at least three months of standard-of-care chemotherapy (gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel or FOLFIRINOX) – the period during which a response to chemotherapy would typically occur – before receiving up to six administrations of MultiTAA T cells in conjunction with chemotherapy.

Out of the 9 evaluable patients (one patient was too early to be evaluated):3 patients experienced objective responses after administration of MultiTAA cells1 patient experienced a complete response2 patients experienced partial responses4 patients experienced stable disease; 2 patients within stable disease boundaries (+20%/-30%) saw reversal of tumor growth – tumors previously growing after chemotherapy alone showed shrinkage after administration of MultiTAA cells1 patient experienced a mixed response (some lesions increased in size and others decreased for a net zero change in size of tumor lesions)1 patient experienced disease progressionOverall tumor volume shrinkage was observed in six out of the eight patients with a measurable tumor after administration of MultiTAA cells. One evaluable patient did not have tumor measurements for analysis.Of the 9 evaluable patients, over half have survived to or beyond the historical median overall survival associated with their respective chemotherapy regimens, and 7 of the 9 patients remain alive.In patients responding to therapy, significant expansion of the infused MultiTAA cells was observed, along with broad-based epitope spreading, with significant expansion of endogenous T cells specific for other tumor specific antigens.