On­coSec re­ports flop for IL-12/Keytru­da com­bo in what may be fi­nal blow

A six-year tri­al test­ing the com­bi­na­tion of On­coSec Med­ical’s IL-12 ther­a­py with Mer­ck’s Keytru­da has end­ed in fail­ure.

The com­bo missed the pri­ma­ry end­point, de­fined as a 17% or bet­ter over­all re­sponse rate on the RE­CIST v1.1 mea­sure as as­sessed by blind­ed in­de­pen­dent cen­tral re­view.

On­coSec had pinned big hopes on the sin­gle-arm Phase II KEYNOTE-695 tri­al, say­ing in 2017 that it was meant to help ap­prove the drug, called tavokino­gene telse­plas­mid or ta­vo. CEO Robert Arch al­so held up the read­out as the com­pa­ny’s key fo­cus when he laid off 45% of the staffers sev­er­al months ago.

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