Halozyme Presents PEGPH20 Phase 1b Results At European Cancer Congress 2013

(RTTNews) - Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. (HALO) reported mature patient progression free survival or PFS and ongoing overall survival or OS data from a Phase 1b trial of PEGPH20, combined with gemcitabine for stage IV metastatic pancreatic cancer treatment. In the study, both PFS and OS data suggest a potential clinical benefit of using PEGPH20 with gemcitabine in patients with high levels of tumor associated hyaluronan or HA. These results are being presented at European Cancer Congress 2013 in a poster session at 14:00 CEST.

The accumulation of HA, a protective matrix that surrounds many solid tumors, was shown to be an indicator of poor patient prognosis and may increase disease progression. During this single arm trial, all patients received PEGPH20 in combination with gemcitabine. The primary aim was to determine the recommended phase 2 dose. Exploratory analysis evaluated PFS and OS in a subset of patients with available biopsy samples and HA scores. In patients with high levels of tumor HA, PFS was 219 days compared to 108 days for patients with low levels of tumor HA, whilst OS in the high HA group was 529 days compared to 174 days for the low HA group. OS data is still not mature for the high HA group.

"PEGPH20 has been shown in animal studies to deplete HA from tumors and improve perfusion and drug delivery to the tumor bed. The data from this trial suggest that similar processes may be occurring in patients as well and that patients with high levels of HA may derive the most treatment benefit from PEGPH20 combination therapy," stated Sunil Hingorani, Associate Member of the Clinical Research and Public Health Divisions at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and lead investigator for this study.

Emerging data show that most pancreatic cancers surround themselves with a protective hyaluronan-rich matrix, which makes the disease difficult to treat and is itself an indicator of poor prognosis.