News regarding Norwegian oncology clinical trials

Jon Amund Kyte at the Norwegian Radium Hospital.

Attracting clinical trials to Norway

Dr. Jon Amund Kyte at Oslo University Hospital (OUH) and Oslo Cancer Cluster share the common goal of bringing more clinical trials to Norway.

 

Jon Amund Kyte is the new Head at the Department of Experimental Cancer Treatment at OUH. He also runs three separate clinical trials and is the leader of a research group at the Department of Cancer Immunology, where he develops novel CAR T cell therapy and conducts translational studies.

Kyte aims to increase the number of and improve the quality of clinical trials in Norway. He says this will contribute to more patients gaining access to novel cancer treatments and to improving the efficacy of cancer therapies.

“The only way to improve cancer treatment is to have clinical trials,” said Kyte.

Oslo Cancer Cluster also wants to bring more clinical trials to Norway to develop innovative cancer medicines. The ambition is to enable faster patient recruitment from across the Nordic region, so that many more can benefit from new treatments, such as immunotherapy.

 

CAR T cells are produced by isolating specific cells of the immune system (T cells) from a cancer patient and modifying them so that they become more effective at recognizing and killing cancer cells.

 

Promising advances

Immunotherapy represents a new type of cancer treatment, which activates the patient’s immune-system to fight off the cancer cells. It gives doctors the opportunity to help patients that previously had limited treatment options. Most types of immunotherapy also cause less side effects than traditional cancer treatments.

“The important point is that immunotherapy can have a long-term effect,” said Kyte.

“Most patients that experience a recurrence or progression of the disease cannot be cured. The traditional treatments only have a limited, short-term effect on them. But immunotherapy may have a long-term effect on the patient – and, in some cases, even cure the disease.”

 

Two big challenges

Immunotherapy may sound like a miracle drug, but researchers still have a long way to go to perfect the treatment for all cancer patients. Kyte highlights two of the biggest barriers that remain.

“One challenge is to develop immunotherapy so that it works efficiently on all types of cancer. The other challenge is to learn how to choose personalised treatment plans: to identify an individual’s biomarkers and find out which treatment will be effective for that specific patient.”

A biomarker is a biological molecule in the patient’s body and these may be used to see how well a patient will respond to a certain treatment. Kyte said that to develop immunotherapy, there needs to be more clinical trials. It is the only way for researchers to find out how to activate an immune response in the patient’s body.

“A big potential for development lies in trying different possible combinations of cancer treatments. In my clinical trials, for example, we combine immunotherapy with immunogenic chemotherapy or radiation therapy,” Kyte explained.

 

Jon Amund Kyte presenting the Clinical Trial Unit.

The Clinical Trial Unit are experts in assisting companies and researchers to conduct clinical trials in Norway.

 

Welcome, companies

OUH has a long history of conducting clinical trials and is an appealing option for both researchers, doctors and companies that wish to initiate their own trials. Kyte welcomes more companies to conduct clinical trials at OUH:

“The more clinical trials that are conducted here by companies, the stronger our clinical research environment becomes and our ability to run our own studies is also strengthened.”

The Clinical Trial Unit in Kyte’s department offers its services to companies that want to run a clinical trial at OUH. They have extensive background knowledge of how the hospital is organised and which approvals are needed to conduct a clinical trial in Norway. They can step in as project coordinator for companies that need help to get their clinical trials up and running.

“We are highly experienced in applying for approvals in Norway. When you run a clinical trial, there are regulations from the Norwegian Medicines Agency and the ethical committee and other governmental agencies. A clinical trial also involves many different parts of the hospital – the departments of pathology and radiology, the laboratories, the infusion unit, the hospital wards and out-patient clinic and the administrative offices that oversee different agreements, data management and biobanking.”

 

Nordic clinical trials

All these administrative obstacles may appear discouraging, but there are many convincing reasons to conduct a clinical trial in Norway.

“The Oslo University Hospital is a good place to run a clinical trial, because in terms of the number of cancer patients, it is one of the largest hospitals in Europe. Norwegian healthcare is also extremely well-organised. Patients are rarely lost to follow-up, because there are no private healthcare alternatives and patients rarely move out of the country,” Kyte explained.

The Clinical Trial Unit is also taking part in the development Nordic Nect, a collaboration to recruit patients from the entire Nordic region to clinical trials. The plan is to have one hospital where the clinical study is conducted and to involve patients from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. There will then be a population of 25 million people from which to recruit patients, which opens the possibility for larger clinical trials.

“This is a good thing for the companies that want to run clinical trials in Norway. It is also good for the researchers. But most of all, it is good for the patients – who have the opportunity to take part in more novel cancer treatments,” said Kyte.

 

 

 

 

 

New collaboration aims to treat cervical cancer

The companies Vaccibody and Roche have started a new collaboration to investigate a drug combination to treat patients with advanced cervical cancer.

Both companies are members of Oslo Cancer Cluster and are involved in the development of novel cancer treatments.

Martin Bonde, CEO of Vaccibody, said: “We are very pleased with this collaboration. This is an important study as it explores a novel targeted treatment approach that addresses the high medical need of patients with advanced cervical cancer.”

Cervical cancer is the most commonly occurring cancer among women in developing countries and is the second most commonly occurring cancer amongst women worldwide.

Vaccibody is a vaccine company that aims to develop and discover new immunotherapies to treat difficult forms of cancer. They have developed a therapeutic DNA vaccine that treats cancers caused by HPV (the human papillomavirus).

Cervical cancer is caused by high risk HPV. HPV16 is the type that most frequently causes cancer.

Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that aims to switch on a patient’s immune system to kill cancer cells.

Roche is a healthcare company that has developed an immune-checkpoint inhibitor. Now Vaccibody wants to test their vaccine in combination with the immune-checkpoint inhibitor designed by Roche.

An immune checkpoint inhibitor is a type of drug that blocks certain proteins made by some types of cancer cells. When these proteins are blocked, the “brakes” on the immune system are released and T cells are able to kill cancer cells better.

Agnete Fredriksen, President and CSO of Vaccibody, said that the combination of the two drugs build on the positive results seen when their vaccine has been used on patients with cervical cancer. Therefore they now expect to see positive results when they combine the vaccine with an immune checkpoint inhibitor.

During the second half of 2019, Vaccibody expects to begin the phase II study, which will involve 50 patients. It will assess the safety of the drug, its ability to invoke a response in the immune system, how the patients tolerate it and how efficient the drug is. The group for this new drug combination involves patients with advanced cervical cancer.

 

Raised NOK 230 million

Vaccibody also raised NOK 230 million (EUR 23.6 Million) in a private placement the same week. The sum was indeed placed all within one day, according to Agnete Fredriksen.

The proceeds from the share sales will be used to conduct the phase II clinical study of the drug combination from Vaccibody and Roche. The money will also go to the preparation of expansion patient groups in Vaccibody’s clinical trials and to generate corporate purposes.

 

For more information, read the press release from Vaccibody.