• 21 Jun 2024
• Admin
• News Article

Aethlon Medical Receives HREC’s Approval for Hemopurifier Cancer Trial

Overview

Aethlon Medical, Inc., a medical therapeutic company focused on developing products to treat cancer and life-threatening infectious diseases, announced that the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) granted full ethics approval for Aethlon's safety, feasibility and dose-finding clinical trial of the Hemopurifier in cancer patients with solid tumours who have stable or progressive disease during anti-PD-1 monotherapy treatment, such as Keytruda (pembrolizumab) or Opdivo (nivolumab) (AEMD-2022-06 Hemopurifier Study). The approval is valid for three years, until June 13, 2027. The trial will be conducted by Prof. Michael Brown and his staff at the Cancer Clinical Trials Unit, CALHN, Royal Adelaide Hospital, located in Adelaide, Australia.

Currently, only approximately 30% of patients who receive pembrolizumab or nivolumab will have lasting clinical responses to these agents. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) produced by tumours have been implicated in the spread of cancers as well as the resistance to anti-PD-1 therapies. The Aethlon Hemopurifier has been designed to bind and remove these EVs from the bloodstream, which may improve therapeutic response rates to anti-PD-1 antibodies. In preclinical studies, the Hemopurifier has been shown to reduce the number of exosomes from the plasma of cancer patient samples.

Words from CMO: Aethlon Medical

• "The approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee at Central Adelaide Local Health Network marks a significant milestone for Aethlon, as they deemed that our clinical study meets the requirements of the Australia's National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research,"" stated Steven LaRosa, MD, chief medical officer of Aethlon Medical. 
• "We look forward to working closely with Prof. Brown and his staff, and with our Contract Research Organizations, NAMSA and ReSQ Clinical Research. The next steps include submission to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the national health regulatory agency of Australia, obtaining approval from the CALHN Research Governance Committee, and conducting a site initiation visit to facilitate patient enrollment.” 
• “Following this Ethics Board approval, we plan to submit to the Ethics Committees at two additional sites in Australia and one in India."

Primary Endpoint

• The primary endpoint of the approximate 18-patient, safety, feasibility and dose-finding trial is safety. 
• The trial will monitor any adverse events and clinically significant changes in lab tests of Hemopurifier treated patients with solid tumours with stable or progressive disease at different treatment intervals, after a two-month run in period of PD-1 antibody, Keytruda or Opdivo monotherapy. 
• Patients who do not respond to the therapy will be eligible to enter the Hemopurifier period of the study where sequential cohorts will receive 1, 2 or 3 Hemopurifier treatments during a one-week period. 
• In addition to monitoring safety, the study is designed to examine the number of Hemopurifier treatments needed to decrease the concentration of EVs and if these changes in EV concentrations improve the body's own natural ability to attack tumour cells. 
• These exploratory central laboratory analyses are expected to inform the design of a subsequent efficacy and safety, Premarket Approval (PMA), study required by regulatory agencies.

Aethlon Medical

Aethlon Medical is a medical therapeutic company focused on developing the Hemopurifier, a clinical stage immunotherapeutic device which is designed to combat cancer and life-threatening viral infections and for use in organ transplantation.