Groundbreaking melanoma clinical trial initiated by Patrys

Oct 18 2010

Patrys Limited (ASX: PAB), which is focused on developing revolutionary treatments for cancer, announced today the treatment of the first patient in a human clinical trial to evaluate PAT-SM6 as a therapy for melanoma. 

PAT-SM6 is a natural human antibody that has shown great promise as a potential treatment for multiple types of cancer including melanoma; importantly, it is the first reported clinical product to target a protein on the surface of cancer cells called GRP78 that plays a number of key roles in cancer cell survival, growth and metastases. 

The patient was screened at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) Cancer Centre and subsequently treated at the Pain and Anaesthesia Research Clinic, which is onsite at the RAH.

To date no safety issues have been observed or reported for this patient. 

Patrys Chief Medical Officer and President, Dr Marie Roskrow, commented: “We are delighted to have treated the first melanoma patient with PAT-SM6 and we look forward to recruiting additional patients into this trial as soon as possible. We believe that the use of cancer-specific natural human antibodies represents a novel approach to the treatment of cancer and Patrys is excited to aggressively pursue this strategy."

Melanoma is a very serious global medical problem, with an expected doubling of incidence every 15 years.  Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, where nearly 10,000 cases are diagnosed each year.  Current treatments for metastatic melanoma are largely ineffective, resulting in a five year survival rate of just 16%.  

Patrys CEO, Dan Devine, added:  "This trial is groundbreaking for two reasons.  First, PAT-SM6 is the first clinical product to target GRP78, a protein on cancer cells that has been shown by third party researchers to play a key role in cancer cell survival, proliferation, metastases and tumour resistance to a wide variety of existing anti-cancer therapies.  As such, PAT-SM6 offers a new alternative for patients with melanoma and other deadly cancers."

"Secondly, PAT-SM6 represents the first clinical product manufactured with Patrys' recently developed production technology, which is the first in the industry to generate yields necessary for natural human antibody development and commercialisation.  This achievement has a broad impact on the value of our products, each of which can be manufactured using the same technology."

The primary aim of this trial is to evaluate the safety and tolerability of PAT-SM6.  Multiple secondary endpoints are aimed at measuring the anti-tumour activity of PAT-SM6.   All results will be finalised and reported at the end of the trial, which is expected to take approximately twelve months to complete.