Mendus AB is a Swedish company dedicated to changing the course of cancer treatment by addressing tumor recurrence and improving survival outcomes for cancer patients, while preserving quality of life.
The company leverages its expertise in allogeneic dendritic cell biology to develop an advanced clinical pipeline of novel, off-the-shelf, cell-based immunotherapies which combine clinical efficacy with a benign safety profile.
Mendus data presentation at ASH
Mendus recently presented survival data based on the completed active study period and long-term follow-up to date from its ADVANCE II clinical trial at the 64th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting (ASH).
ADVANCE II is a phase 2 monotherapy trial evaluating DCP-001 as a maintenance therapy in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) for patients brought into complete remission through chemotherapy, but with measurable residual disease (MRD).
The ADVANCE II trial has completed the 70-week follow-up period after start of DCP-001 treatment, and patients are now in long-term follow up.
The only drug approved for AML maintenance therapy is oral azacitidine, which in MRD positive patients led to a median relapse free survival (RFS) of 7.1 months versus 2.7 months in the placebo arm and an overall survival (OS) of 14.6 months versus 10.4 months in the placebo arm of the registration trial.
“The survival data from the ADVANCE II trial show the potential of DCP-001 to bring a meaningful improvement as compared to current standard of care, particularly for patients with measurable residual disease,” said Arjan van de Loosdrecht, principal investigator of the ADVANCE II trial.
“Considering the limited options currently available for AML maintenance therapy, new treatments are clearly needed, and novel therapies designed to activate the patient’s immune system such as DCP-001 could become an important approach.”
Increased immune response
Increased immune responses against tumor-associated antigens were seen in 17 out of 20 patients following DCP-001 administration, with a significantly higher number of immune responses observed in patients with an MRD response.
“Residual disease and tumor recurrence is what causes most cancer-related deaths. We could not be more pleased with the data from the ADVANCE II trial studying DCP-001 in a very challenging patient population, with MRD being associated with fast relapse in AML,” said Erik Manting, CEO of Mendus.
“The survival data reported at ASH, combined with the immunomonitoring results and earlier reported MRD data, confirm that DCP-001 could have a large therapeutic potential as a maintenance therapy in AML and possibly in additional indications where residual disease poses a threat to patients.”
We spoke with Erik Manting, CEO of Mendus, at Bio-Europe in Leipzig, Germany.