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Safety Committee approval based on positive Phase 1 safety data demonstrating the combination therapy to be generally well-tolerated with no severe treatment-related adverse events or dose-limiting toxicities
Enrollment for Phase 2 expected to commence imminently
OCALA, Fla., Feb. 05, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AIM ImmunoTech Inc. (NYSE American: AIM) (“AIM” or the “Company”) today announced Safety Committee approval to proceed with the Phase 2 portion of the Phase 1b/2 clinical trial involving AIM’s Ampligen® (rintatolimod) and AstraZeneca’s anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor Imfinzi® (durvalumab) in the treatment of late-stage pancreatic cancer (“DURIPANC”).
DURIPANC is an investigator-initiated, exploratory, open-label, single-center study in the Netherlands at the Erasmus Medical Center (“Erasmus MC”). The approval to proceed to Phase 2 was granted following the Safety Committee’s review of the complete Phase 1 safety data, which found the combination therapy to be generally well-tolerated with no treatment-related severe adverse events or dose-limiting toxicities.
AIM CEO Thomas K. Equels stated: “Patients with late-stage pancreatic cancer have very few options. This is a lethal malignancy that kills approximately 50,000 Americans every year and there is no effective therapy. It is one of the highest unmet needs in oncology, and we are excited to see this clinical study at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands move to Phase 2. Ampligen is believed to reprogram the immune system to enhance the cellular response, and this combination study with Imfinzi is part of our broader strategy to explore these effects in combination with synergistic anti-cancer agents, including checkpoint inhibitors.”
Prof. Casper H.J. van Eijck, MD, PhD, Pancreato-biliary Surgeon at Erasmus MC and Coordinating Investigator for the DURIPANC study, commented: “We have observed improvements in quality of life and we saw no toxicity at all – with ‘quality of life’ recognized as an indicator of stable disease. As a comparison, approximately 80% of patients at Erasmus MC with similar disease, but who did not receive the treatment, showed disease progression after only three months. While this new data is extremely preliminary, it is also encouraging since some patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer still have stable disease for 15 or more months after starting FOLFIRINOX, including six or seven months of maintenance therapy. By analyzing blood samples and tumor biopsies taken at different time points before and after the start of immunotherapy, we will obtain crucial insights into several aspects of treatment response, immune dynamics and tumor evolution.”