A new drug, a monoclonal antibody known as enoblituzumab, is safe in men with aggressive prostate cancer and may induce clinical activity against cancer throughout the body, according to a phase 2 study led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. If confirmed in additional studies, enoblituzumab could become the first promising antibody-based immunotherapy agent against prostate cancer.
In a clinical trial, 32 men with high-risk or very high-risk prostate cancers who were scheduled for prostate cancer surgery were treated with six weekly infusions of enoblituzumab prior to surgery and were followed for an average of 30 months thereafter. Twenty-one patients, or 66%, had an undetectable prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level 12 months following surgery, suggesting that there was no sign of residual disease. Additionally, the drug was well-tolerated overall; no patients had any surgical delays or medical complications during or after the operation.
A description of the work was published April 3 in the journal Nature Medicine.
