The company now hopes to further establish the potential of Proxinium in a clinical trial involving 10 sites across North America.
“While there are limited treatment options for patients with recurrent, refractory head and neck cancer, previous clinical data suggest that Proxinium therapy may be associated with an improvement in survival in this patient population,” said Dr Nick Glover, Viventia’s president and CEO.
Proxinium combines a powerful cytotoxic protein payload with the highly precise tumour-targeting characteristics of a monoclonal antibody. A single molecule of the cytotoxic protein payload, Pseudomonas exotoxin, is capable of killing a cancer cell. The antibody fragment of Proxinium targets EpCAM – an antigen that is highly expressed on many epithelial cancers including head & neck cancer, ensuring that the payload is delivered directly to the tumor.