The control arm is a placebo group and the participants in the placebo group are receiving murcidencel (DCVax-L).
In the combo trial, patients who receive DCVax-L + placebo are being compared to patients who receive DCVax-L + pembrolizumab.
The control arm is receiving DCVax-L. While DCVax-L is not the current SOC, it is highly significant and notable that DCVax-L is being permitted to fill the role of SOC as the best available therapy within this combo study for rGBM.
The P3 was brilliantly executed and is more than adequate all by itself, but the application(s) for approval will require lots of paper clips and plenty of staples for all the extra pages that will be included—there is a voluminous catalog of supportive data that has been collected, analyzed, and validated.
All clinical data are relevant to a regulatory application including those data gathered from other studies, interim analyses, and compassionate use. All the DCVax-L trials have produced substantial safety and efficacy data, and two of the three clinical trials ran for over a decade with survivors alive today.
External controls in oncology indications are the norm at the FDA. Period.
"Pivotal trials supporting oncology approvals were much more likely to use a historical control than nononcology approvals (13 [72.2%] vs 8 [14.0%]; P < .001)..."https://t.co/CPyohBztFIpic.twitter.com/ap41RUpvVb