Scancell Holdings updates on clinical trial of melanoma vaccine

Scancell Holdings said Tuesday it edged closer to completing clinical trials of a vaccine for the treatment of melanoma. The developer of therapeutic cancer vaccines recruited and treated the final patient in the second phase of tests for SCIB1, a DNA ImmunoBody injection.The trial is being conducted in five UK centres in patients with Stage III/IV disease to assess the safety of the treatment and the immune response. Patients are being treated with a 4.0mg dose of SCIB1, five times over six months. Last month Scandell released findings from the first phase of the study which showed SCIB1 produced an immune response that may benefit patients with malignant melanoma. At the same the group also announced approval from regulators to treat an extra group of patients with a higher 8.0mg dose of the vaccine."As expected, the recruitment of patients in the second part of the trial proceeded faster than recruitment for the first part of the trial, as we were not constrained by the cohort study design requiring sequential dose escalation, and there were more patients available with earlier stage disease," said Lindy Durrant, Joint Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Scancell Holdings and Professor of Cancer Immunotherapy at Nottingham University."The recruitment and dosing of the final patient in part two gives us confidence that this phase of the study will be completed by the end of 2013, consistent with previous expectations."Shares were down 0.59% to 42.25p at 9:19 Tuesday. RD