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February 15, 2022 Bioscience

BioXcel reports more promising results for prostate cancer drug

PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER BioXcel Therapeutics CEO Vimal Mehta
By Liese Klein

Patients with a rare and aggressive form of prostate cancer showed improvement after treatment with a drug from BioXcel Therapeutics, the company announced Monday.

A combination of BXCL701, BioXcel’s investigational oral innate immunity activator, and pembrolizumab showed strong clinical activity against metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) in patients in a Phase 2 trial. The patients presented with either adenocarcinoma or small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (SCNC).

Pembrolizumab, sold under the brand name Keytruda, is an immunotherapy drug used in treatment of melanoma, lung cancer and other forms of cancer. 

Dr. Rahul Aggarwal, associate director for clinical sciences at the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that BioXcel’s drug has the potential “to redefine the standard of care for patients with advanced disease.”

“There are, unfortunately, very few treatment options available for patients with mCRPC,” Aggarwal said. “The results were particularly encouraging given that patients were not preselected on the basis of predictors of immune response in prostate cancer.”

BioXcel, which uses artificial intelligence to develop neuroscience and immuno-oncology drugs, announced in October it would expand its Phase 2 trials of BXCL701 after early promising results.

BioXcel Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Vincent J. O’Neill said, “We are excited about the broad potential of BXCL701 to extend the activity of checkpoint therapy into cold tumor settings and look forward to initiating the randomized trial extension in patients with adenocarcinoma and continuing patient enrollment in SCNC.”

Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.

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