On April 23, 2025 Candel Therapeutics, Inc. (Candel or the Company) (Nasdaq: CADL), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing multimodal biological immunotherapies to help patients fight cancer, reported that an abstract was accepted for an oral presentation at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) Annual Meeting taking place May 30 to June 3, 2025, in Chicago, IL (Press release, Candel Therapeutics, APR 23, 2025, View Source [SID1234652051]). The oral presentation will feature data from the Company’s phase 3 clinical trial of CAN-2409 in patients with intermediate-to-high risk localized prostate cancer.
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Details are as follows:
CAN-2409 – Localized Prostate Cancer
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Abstract Title: Phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of CAN-2409+prodrug in combination with standard-of-care external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) for newly diagnosed localized prostate cancer
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Presenter: Theodore DeWeese, M.D. *, the Francis Watt Baker, M.D., and Lenox D. Baker Jr., M.D., Dean of the Medical Faculty and CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine
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Session Title: Oral Abstract Session – Genitourinary Cancer – Prostate, Testicular, and Penile
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Session Date/Time: Tuesday, June 3, 2025; 9:45 AM – 12:45 PM CT
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Location: Hall A, McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago, IL
Full abstracts will be released by ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper) on Thursday, May 22, 2025, at 5:00 PM ET. Details from the presentations will be available following the event on the Candel website at Candel Media.
Dr. DeWeese has no relationship with Candel, other than serving as the national principal investigator for Candel’s phase 3 clinical trial of CAN-2409 in patients with intermediate-to-high risk localized prostate cancer. He has never received reimbursements, consulting fees, or EAB fees from Candel, and he has no shares of common stock, options to purchase common stock or other stake in Candel.
About CAN-2409
CAN-2409, Candel’s most advanced multimodal biological immunotherapy candidate, is an investigational, off-the-shelf, replication-defective adenovirus engineered to deliver the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-tk) gene to a patient’s specific tumor and induce an individualized, systemic immune response against the tumor. HSV-tk is an enzyme that locally converts orally administered valacyclovir into a toxic nucleotide analogue that kills nearby cancer cells. Together, this regimen is designed to induce an individualized and specific CD8+ T cell-mediated response against the injected tumor and uninjected distant metastases for broad anti-tumor activity, based on in situ immunization against a variety of the patient’s own tumor antigens. Because of its versatility, CAN-2409 has the potential to treat a broad range of solid tumors. Encouraging monotherapy activity, as well as combination activity with standard of care (SoC) radiotherapy, surgery, chemotherapy, and immune checkpoint inhibitors, have previously been shown in several preclinical and clinical settings. More than 1,000 patients have been dosed with CAN-2409 with a favorable tolerability profile reported to date, supporting the potential for combination with other therapeutic strategies.
Candel’s clinical development program for CAN-2409 includes completed positive phase 2a clinical trials in both non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), as well as a positive pivotal randomized, placebo-controlled phase 3 clinical trial of CAN-2409 in localized, non-metastatic prostate cancer. In December 2024, Candel announced that CAN-2409 achieved its primary endpoint in this phase 3 clinical trial in men with intermediate-to-high-risk, localized prostate cancer, demonstrating statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in disease-free survival when added to SoC radiation therapy +/- androgen deprivation therapy.
In the Company’s randomized controlled phase 2a clinical trial of CAN-2409 in borderline resectable PDAC, positive survival data showed notable improvement with an estimated median overall survival of 31.4 months after experimental treatment with CAN-2409 plus SoC versus 12.5 months in the control group in patients with PDAC who only received SoC. Median survival post-progression was 21.2 months in patients who received CAN-2409 compared to 6.4 months in the control arm. The final survival data from the phase 2a clinical trial of CAN-2409, in patients with stage III/IV NSCLC, showed an mOS of 24.5 months in 46 evaluable patients receiving 2 courses of CAN-2409 (per protocol population; cohort 1 and 2) and 21.5 months in evaluable patients from cohort 2 (n=41) that had progressive disease at baseline, despite Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor treatment. CAN-2409 plus prodrug has been granted Fast Track Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of PDAC, stage III/IV NSCLC in patients who are resistant to first line PD-(L)1 inhibitor therapy and who do not have activating molecular driver mutations or have progressed on directed molecular therapy and localized prostate cancer. The FDA has also granted Orphan Drug Designation to CAN-2409 for the treatment of PDAC. Candel’s pivotal phase 3 clinical trial in newly diagnosed, localized prostate cancer was conducted under a Special Protocol Assessment agreed with the FDA.