Bellicum has initiated dosing of the first patient in a phase I/II clinical trial of BP-GMAX-CD1, a novel pharmacologically regulated dendritic cell vaccine for the treatment of prostate cancer.
The disease-specific trial is being conducted under a Bellicum Investigational New Drug application allowed by the FDA in 2008. The company anticipates reporting initial results of the study in 2010.
The dose-escalation trial will evaluate the safety of BP-GMAX-CD1 and AP1903, in a minimum of 24 patients with androgen independent prostate cancer.
Kevin Slawin, president and CMO at Bellicum, said: This first clinical trial of BP-GMAX-CD1 is designed to establish proof of principle for our core iCD40 technology, which has been engineered to overcome the critical potency limitations of previous cancer vaccine strategies. Dosing the first patient is an exciting and significant milestone in our quest to deliver safer and more effective therapies to patients with advanced cancer.