Trovax yields median PFS of 3.4 months

French drug major Sanofi-Aventis and UK-based Oxford BioMedica reported encouraging results from Phase II trials of TroVax in metastatic renal cancer. The UK firm's lead therapeutic cancer vaccine, is being developed in metastatic renal cancer and other solid cancers in collaboration with Sanofi-Aventis.

Mid-stage findings on the vaccine were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. In a Phase II trial of TroVax and low-dose interleukin-2 in metastatic renal cancer, median progression-free survival was 3.4 months. Median overall survival has yet to be reached but exceeds 12.9 months and 16 patients (64%) remain alive. In terms of immune responses, 21 of the 25 subjects (84%) mounted 5T4-specific antibody responses. There was a statistically-significant correlation between the magnitude of 5T4-specific antibody responses and both progression-free survival (p<0.05, log rank test) and overall survival (p<0.05, log rank test).