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Lilly have today announced some really impressive results for their RET inhibitor, Selpercatinib trial in lung cancer. The results were presented at WCLC 2019 and showed an objective response rate of 68% in patients who had previously failed on chemo and had no other treatment options. Median duration of response was 20.3 months and progression free survival 18.3 months. Wonderful!

This drug was developed by Loxo Oncology who were bought by Lilly for $8 billion in February this year. Worth noting that head of Loxo's Scientific Advisory Board was Keith Flaherty

Chelsea, thanks

Ah OK thanks, am with you now - yes I saw that you were especially positive about Vulpes and expect more from them too. Think you may well be right. I just wondered whether you had found anything in particular re. the glycans - no matter.

Just catching up on older posts - re. your 23.37 last night.

I'm being very slow and is probably me because haven't been able to keep up with bb as much as I'd like but are you saying you predicted the Glycans RNS or somebody else did, if so who?

Re. your 7.34 - thanks for posting, hadn't seen that before. Post rec. :)

yep thanks for posting cc - haven't looked at the content but it's certainly much easier to navigate around

Chelsea - The 2023 date is when the final patient receives his/her last dose and the study is complete. We know that the dosing period is 2 years so in effect this means that Scancell are estimating that recruitment to the trial will take around a year and will be complete in September 2021. So last patient recruited in Aug/Sep 2021 and receives treatment for 2 years takes us to September 2023 when the study is complete.

Of course these are just estimates and that doesn't mean we will have to wait until 2023 for any updates. I'm sure they will update with any progress as and when they are able.

Dracula - nice post

Just following on from our earlier discussion re. UK v US study centres. It may well be that since Scancell only have approval to run the trial in the UK , they have no choice but to state that all 25 patients will be recruited in the UK. So to be fair, it is possible I guess that they could add a US centre as and when the IND is cleared.

I agree with you that it seems unlikely and for reasons stated before, I hope it doesn't happen but it is possible.

Inanaco,

I have been out all day and have only just caught up on the bb. I can assure you that if I'd seen your earlier posts I would have responded immediately. Your assumption that I try to downplay Scancell is completely wrong and am disappointed that post received 5 recommendations.

Chelsea, Would be surprised if they just recruit from Nottingham but they have to complete the safety run in for the first 6 patients before they can expand to recruit the other 19 so I assume there is no hurry to open additional sites.

Inanaco, in view of the fact that we have much more interesting things to discuss I'm not going to clog up the bb responding to your earlier posts.

Agreed and now the trial is up and running, it makes complete sense to me to restrict it to the UK rather than divert precious resources to opening US sites.

Steve67 - great spot and thanks for posting.

So good to finally see a Scancell product back in trials and to find out more detail around the study protocol. This line is interesting:-

'This study is expected to enrol approximately 25 melanoma patients from the UK.'

Looks like it's just Nottingham for now but I assume other centres in the UK will be added in due course.

When deals are mentioned, I think most people imagine a standard licensing deal with big pharma to develop and commercialise a therapeutic treatment - I'm not sure that's the case with these mAbs.

There are 4 or 5 main companies involved in the supply of antibodies to the pharmaceutical industry and academia - Abcam, CST, Millipore, Thermo Fisher etc. When Scancell talk about non-exclusive deals to evaluate Avidimab, it's likely that it is with one of companies (or similar). The aim would be to sign collaborations to allow potential partners to evaluate the Scancell mAbs and if successful they would then add them to their catalogue of antibodies available for supply to industry and academic institutions. There may also be a development element to any eventual agreements.

Think of these partners as antibody supermarkets and at the moment Scancell are approaching them and asking them to evaluate their mAbs with a view to stocking our Avidimab range on their shelves.

All just IMO of course. I know others may not want to speculate but also worth noting that the Chairman of Abcam is Peter Allen who was a non-exec director of Scancell back in 2013.

Chelsea,

My initial reaction was that it's good to see a strategy to take the platform forward that minimises the impact on already stretched resources. I'm happy that it's a commercial partner (rather than academic) and that it somewhat lessens Scancell's reliance on ImmunoBody. As I posted first thing yesterday on ADVFN, I wonder whether the partner is Abcam but of course that's just a pure guess and we may never find out.

A couple of other points of interest that have since emerged via the Trinity Delta report and CH's interview . Firstly, we now know that Scancell are offering 4 mAbs for licensing, FG88, FG27, FG129 and FG134 and have some detail for each. The other point was the possibility of these mAbs being used to deliver other drugs.

Finally, fortunate timing :) !!

Chester,

I'm not sure that it's right to say that back-end loaded deals are worth more or that Scancell prefer them. Back-end loaded deals are just a way of facilitating acquisitions of IP carried out at a very early stage of development. The deal is structured in terms of price and the timing of payment to reflect the risk of an unproven asset. The earlier the stage of development, the more heavily back-end loaded the deal.

It is generally accepted that the later the stage of development, the better the deal and the higher the up-front payment as it reflects the diminishing risk. That's why the valuation of any asset increases substantially as it successfully clears each stage of clinical trials and why Scancell are keen to at least get Modi1 through a phase I/II trial. If they had the funds then I'm absolutely certain they would want to develop the entire pipeline as far as possible before entering into any deals but in the real world it's just not possible for a baby bio to run a large, randomised phase III oncology trial.

It makes perfect sense for Scancell to try and out-license the glycan mAbs and Moditope TCRs at a preclinical stage because they simply don't have the funding, resources or infrastructure to do it in-house but the value of back-end loaded deals isn't higher than late-stage deals.

Article in Daily Mail today featuring 13 year old Rhys Williams who suffers from EB. What a dreadful disease. Can only hope that new treatments being developed by companies like Amryt will offer some relief for these children in the near future.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7428015/Mum-appeals-birthday-cards-son-life-painful-skin-condition.html

The financing announced for Achilles today was a standard equity placing, not a licensing deal so won't involve IP at all.

It's worth having a look at the history of Achilles and it's origins which lie deeply embedded in institutions such as the Francis Crick Institute, CRUK, CRT etc. Also its founders, particularly Prof. Charles Swanton, a high profile figure, Chief Clinician for CRUK, Fellow of the Royal Society, Group Leader Francis Crick Institute. etc., etc.

So you have a company with an impeccable pedigree, operating in the hot area of personalised therapies and founded by very well connected and highly respected individuals. Very simply, that means that they can attract levels of funding that Scancell can only dream of but only time will tell how their tech. compares.

I was repying to your 13.29 - I have no issue, I am clear on my understanding and expectations of Scancell.

Regarding the trial design, safety run in doesn't automatically equate to dose escalation. I hope you're wrong because if it's a dose escalation then they can't even recruit all 6 patients straight away. They'll have to recruit and dose 3 patients for at least 3 months (at best IMO) and then seek approval to escalate the dose and only then will they be able to commence recruitment for second cohort. That obviously has a knock-on effect for commencement of part 2.

Now perhaps that would be a good question for the AGM . How frustrating though, we have waited for 3 years for this trial and if you're right, Scancell are currently dosing patients yet we know so little about it.

Inanaco,

1) Good grief, I'm not trying to cause confusion. I was trying to explain that although we haven't had notification that the first patient has been dosed, there may be plenty going on in the background and that actually there's a fairly comprehensive screening process that patients must get through before dosing.

2) No I don't accept that my comparison was unfair. You believe that the fact Scancell have said the trial was due to start immediately negates the need for an RNS and I disagree. Previous statements of intent are meaningless, it's the event itself that's important.

3) As for what the investigator has to do with it - the clinical trial protocol submitted to the MHRA with the CTA would have detailed the Principal Investigator and ethics committee also. I don't know whether a change would require an amendment or not

4) I haven't seen it stated anywhere that part 1 of the clinical trial is a dose escalation - where did you get that information from? I thought they were going straight in at 8mg.

Chelsea,

I hope you're right, you may well be and for all we know Scancell may be saving all of the details for the AGM.

Inanaco,

Are you suggesting that when they originally submitted the CTA to the MHRA they named Poulam Patel as the principal investigator then?

As for your question regarding other bios, I have no idea what announcements were previously made and I'm not going to waste my time checking. You believe that patients are being dosed and that it doesn't require an RNS. I have no idea whether patients are being dosed but I believe Scancell should issue an RNS.