Endocyte Halts Ovarian Cancer Drug Trial

Endocyte and Merck have released a statement saying that they have halted a late stage trial of their experimental ovarian cancer drug, Vintafolide. The drug company said that Vintafolide failed to improve survival rates without the cancer worsening. An independent safety committee reviewing the clinical trial made a recommendation for the trial to end. Although the drug did not work as expected for patients, the safety committee said there were not any particular safety concerns for patients taking part in the trial.

This past March, the drug was recommended for conditional approval in the European Union. The failure of the company’s drug in this late stage trial could create unfavorable conditions for bringing the product to the market, and an approval for the drug is now considered a long shot. Christopher Raymond, a Robert W. Baird analyst, told the Chicago Tribune that the “chances of formal approval are slim to none.” Ron Ellis, the CEO of Endocyte, said that the company was still in the process of figuring out what went wrong. “We are reviewing and validating the data in collaboration with Merck in order to gain a better understanding of the interim trial results and make our formal decision regarding the execution of the trial,” said Ellis.

 Endocyte’s technology platform might also be under scrutiny because of the Vintafolide’s clinical trial failure. The technology works by binding anti-cancer agents to certain receptors on cancer cells, which is supposed to make treatments more effective. The company is working on two different cancer drugs using the same technology, and following these results, industry experts now have doubts as to whether that technology will ever prove effective.