Cantargia: New Clinical IL1RAP Data

Research Note

2023-09-28

09:24

Cantargia will present new clinical data at the AACR 2023 relating to IL1RAP in pancreatic cancer, the summary of which was published today. There were new interesting results from monotherapy patients.

Richard Ramanius

23 pancreatic cancer patients in CANFOUR were treated with nadunolimab as monotherapy after failure of chemotherapy. IL1RAP levels were assessed in tumour biopsies taken from 17 patients. The results are presented below.

median overall survivalmedian progression-free survival
IL1RAP high5.83.6
IL1RAP low2.61.6

The results are clearly superior for the IL1RAP high patients, though they are not statistically significant (the p-value for mOS was 0.079 and for mPFS it was 0.073, so it was close). They are in line with the results already published from first-line patients in CANFOUR. The survival figures are poor for this patient category, especially for IL1RAP low patients. Cantargia also published the most recent data from the pancreatic cancer patients treated with combination therapy in CANFOUR, with better mOS and mPFS for IL1RAP high patients treated with nadunolimab and GEM-NAB versus IL1RAP low:

Efficacy parameter according to iRECIST1.1All patients (n=73)IL1RAP high (n=29)IL1RAP low (n=20)Historical control [1] (n=431); RECIST
Overall survival (OS); median13.2 mo14.2 mo10.6 mo8.5 mo
Progression-free survival (iPFS); median7.2 mo7.4 mo5.8 mo5.5 mo (PFS)
1-year survival58%67%39%35%
Overall response rate (iORR)33%48%30%23%
Duration of response (iDoR); median7.3 mo9.5 mo5.6 moNA

Public biomarker data furthermore suggest that IL1RAP is upregulated in advanced PDAC, and IL-1alpha and IL-1beta also show increased levels, confirming the validity of IL1RAP as a target in PDAC.

The new monotherapy results, though from a small number of patients, are interesting in that they suggest nadunolimab can be effective as monotherapy in IL1RAP high patients in pancreatic cancer. Cantargia has previously reported efficacy of nadunolimab as a monotherapy leading to a complete response in NSCLC. We will come back with an interview in a few days after the presentation (November 29). We restate our base case of SEK20.

Disclosures and disclaimers