Therapy is being used during a pivotal phase 1 study into patients with pancreatic cancer.

Alligator Bioscience and Amphera have announced that the last patient in their REACTIVE-2 phase 1 research has been dosed. The research is evaluating mitazalimab when used in combination with MesoPher among patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

The single-location, open-label trial is assessing the efficacy and safety of Alligator’s lead candidate mitazalimab along with Amphera’s cancer vaccine MesoPher. It involves patients who have already undergone standard-of-care treatment with mFOLFIRINOX.

The REACTIVE-2 study is currently being performed at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, while initial results are expected later this year.

Søren Bregenholt, chief executive officer at Alligator Bioscience, reflected: “Our CD40 agonist and Amphera’s cancer vaccine have both shown great promise in their own separate clinical studies emphasising the crucial role of dendritic cells and other myeloid cells in the immune response to pancreatic cancer.”

He added: “We have high hopes that a combination of mitazalimab and MesoPher can drive clinically meaningful anti-tumour immunity and potentially offer a new therapeutic option in this hard-to-treat patient population.”

Rob Meijer, chief executive officer at Amphera, concluded: “We are very pleased to have successfully reached this important milestone in the REACTIVE-2 trial. MesoPher is able to invigorate the immune system without toxicity to the patient. This makes MesoPher ideally suited in combination treatments for difficult-to-treat cancer indications.”

Meanwhile, Mitazalimab is also being researched when used in combination with mFOLFIRINOX during OPTIMIZE-1, a phase 2 trial in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have yet to be treated. Earlier this year, Alligator revealed strong interim results from OPTIMIZE-1, which demonstrated an objective response rate of 52% among 23 patients.