Noxopharm Ltd (ASX:NOX) has received proof-of-concept confirmation from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), with an abstract from the Annual Meeting 2022 providing evidence of the modulatory effect of Veyonda®’s active ingredient idronoxil on the immune system.
The research – conducted by the University of Hong Kong – focused on nasopharyngeal carcinoma (a type of nasal cavity cancer), examining the effect of idronoxil in combination with standard chemotherapy drug cisplatin on cell lines cultured from human nasopharyngeal tumours and in animal models of that cancer type.
Drug combination improves immune response
The results confirmed that the combination of idronoxil and cisplatin could change the tumour environment, allowing a larger number of immune cells to infiltrate the tumours compared to the control.
The level of immune cell infiltration rose 67% in the combination treatment compared to the control group, measured as the number of immune cells vs blood cells in the tumour.
Clinical Professor in the Department of Clinical Oncology at the University of Hong Kong and lead researcher Professor Dora Kwong stated: “Our work has been reviewed by the most eminent oncologists and oncology researchers to be accepted as an online publication as part of ASCO 2022, the leading clinical oncology meeting worldwide.
“It is my hope that our work will contribute to the development of new treatments for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.”
Enabling immune cells to penetrate tumours is an important objective in current cancer therapy developments as it can increase the anti-cancer effect of commonly used cancer drugs, validating the rational behind Noxopharm’s clinical trials CEP-2 and IONIC which are currently ongoing in the USA and Australia.
The full study paper is still being written, to be submitted to a highly ranked peer-reviewed scientific journal for publication.