Clinical stage oncology company Prescient Therapeutics Ltd (ASX: PTX) has finished off another strong quarter with a healthy $21.8 million cash balance that will serve as a war chest for funding the next stage of their exciting clinical trials.

The 2023 financial year as a whole was the most crucial yet for Prescient, as a raft of robust clinical data flowed in that has propelled the biotech company into a new chapter of cancer therapeutics. 

PTX-100 is advancing towards a Phase 2 trial, after releasing Phase 1b trial data that included two complete responses in patients with relapsed and refractory (r/r) Peripheral T-cell Lymphoma (PTCL). The median progression free survival rate for r/r PTCL patients with current therapies is just less than 4 months.  In total, 7 out of 10 evaluable patients with r/r PTCL and r/r CTCL had durations of responses that exceeded the standard of care. 

It was a big step forward in the treatment of a disease that currently involves patients being bombarded with chemotherapy that has an approximately 68% chance of either not working or resulting in a relapse. One of these drugs, Folotyn, costs US$450,540 per patient, per year –  and comes with a greater than 70% chance of a serious adverse event including anaemia, mucositis and thrombocytopenia (low platelets).

During the quarter, Prescient also continued to progress their cell therapy platforms. OmniCAR has demonstrated a clear ability to drastically enhance CAR-T tumour killing abilities in in vitro models of glioblastoma and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Only 25% of glioblastoma patients survive more than one year, and only 5% of patients survive more than five years. The five year survival rate for AML in the US for people over 20 is 29.5%.

Armed with the HER2 and the EGFRvIII binders, OmniCAR demonstrated its ability to specifically target only the instructed antigen, while being able to switch between antigens or switch off entirely, according to instructions provided by the practitioner. Effective killing of tumour cells was observed, and a clear correlation between increased dosage of binders being associated with reduced live tumour cells was established, while unarmed (no binder dose given) T cells resulted in a significant increase in live tumour cells.

Armed with the highly prospective antigen CD33, OmniCAR exhibited dramatic AML tumour killing capabilities, as the live tumour cell count was rapidly diminished over the testing period. Once again, unarmed OmniCAR remained inactive and the tumour cell count increased over the same testing period.

There was also success for the company’s other cell therapy technology, CellPryme-M, a cell therapy manufacturing enhancement which is working towards solving key problems in CAR-T. Current therapies are making too many effector and effector memory T-cells, when they need to be making more stem and central memory T-cells (Tcm). The CellPryme-M platform can overcome this obstacle, while CellPryme-A primes the complex tumour microenvironment for cell therapy. 

An in vivo study using colon cancer cells that created a 140mm2 tumour showed that treatment with CellPryme-A (adjuvant) and CellPryme-M CAR-T cells reduced the size of the tumour to just 12mm2. This compared to a reduction to 50mm2 with just CellPryme-A and CAR-T cells, and two tumours of 53mm2 and 133mm2 in size, respectively, with CAR-T cells alone.

There were also favourable results with a breast cancer study conducted with Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, University of Melbourne and Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre.

Prescient had a chance to present their data at various prestigious conferences throughout the quarter, including the International Society of Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT) in Paris.

The company remains very engaged in business development activities and continues to build awareness of its programs amongst pharma and biotech companies, researchers and collaborators as data continues to unfold. 

Prescient also appointed highly experienced and decorated US biotech executive Dr Ellen Feigal as a Non-Executive Director of PTX. Dr Feigal is currently a Partner and Head of the Biologics practice at NDA Partners, where she leads efforts in designing and executing product development regulatory strategies in the areas of cell therapies, medical imaging, haematology and oncology. 

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