Laura Aguilar, MD, PhD, on Evaluating Immunotherapy DOC1021 for Glioblastoma
The chief medical officer of Diakonos Oncology discussed phase 1 data on the company’s autologous dendritic cell immunotherapy.
“At this point, we have pretty good follow-up on these patients, and what we have seen is a better survival than you would expect.”
Patients with glioblastoma face very limited treatment options and the unmet need for novel treatments is substantial. Diakonos Oncology is currently evaluating dubodencel (also known as DOC1021), an investigational autologous dendritic cell immunotherapy made from patients’ own tumor cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells, for the treatment of gliobastoma in a phase 1 clinical trial. Notably, the company is presenting data from this study at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, held May 30 to June 3, in Chicago, Illinois.
In the lead up to the conference, CGTLive® interviewed Laura Aguilar MD, PhD, the chief medical officer of Diakonos Oncology, to learn more. Aguilar described how DOC1021 is made and how it is intended to function, and then went over the key results being presented at ASCO this year. She pointed out that the study enrolled 18 patients, including 16 patients who were newly diagnosed and 2 with recurrent disease. DOC1021 was administered via 3 injections into the deep cervical lymph nodes following chemoradiation, but prior to adjuvant temozolomide. Aguilar stated that the immunotherapy was well tolerated across all 4 dose levels, with no dose-limiting toxicities observed.
With regard to efficacy findings, Aguilar explained that investigators observed increased T-cell trafficking to the tumor in posttreatment tumor samples, as well as rises in central memory CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells in the peripheral blood. The 12-month survival ratefor the 16 newly diagnosed patients was 88%, notably higher than would be expected for the patient population with standard of care treatment, given that the group had poor prognostic features, such as being 94% MGMT unmethylated and 25% not having had gross total tumor resections. Aguilar also briefly discussed plans for a recently launched phase 2 clinical trial for DOC1021.
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