BMS andMerck are having no luck with Opdivo and Keytruda. Their efforts to make either drug work better continue to fail.
Merck's Keytruda Takes Another Hit with Phase III ProstateCancer Fail | BioSpace
IONIC has now treated enough patients to justify a safety-and-efficacy abstract submission for the ASCO annual meeting in June. I expect both BMS and NOX to have received periodic IONIC progress reports, so it is reassuring that BMS continues to supply Opdivo for the trial. There are some subtle indications that things are going well.
Professor de Souza was instrumental in saving Graham Kelly’s life, so he has great confidence in NOX66. Nonetheless, there was no data to say that the combination of NOX66 and Opdivo would be safe to use and so treatment of the first few patients in the IONIC trial would have proceeded very slowly, as the clinicians learnt how to cope with any immune-related side-effects The premise of IONIC is that NOX66 will be able to restore the immune function in tumours (COLD to HOT conversion).
IONIC is in effect a proof-of-concept trial that measures both safety and efficacy. We do not know how well the combination of NOX66 and Opdivo has performed, but we DO know that patients were resistant to Opdivo and that additional clinicians have been happy to offer IONIC treatment to their patients.
We will know more when the list of successful ASCO abstracts is published. Noxopharm’s new CEO seems determined to publish the bare minimum about our clinical trials, so I will try to fill the void.
