Craig M. McDonald, MD, on Safety and Efficacy of DMD Cell Therapy
The principal investigator of the HOPE-2 trial discussed safety and efficacy of Capricor’s CAP-1002.
“We think that the therapy is going to preserve critical arm function that's important to maintain activities of daily living, such as feeding, dressing, scratching the nose, or even hugging a parent... those would be enhanced by this therapeutic.”
Capricor Therapeutics’ CAP-1002, an allogeneic cardiosphere-derived cell therapy, has yielded statistically significant clinical benefits in non-ambulatory patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).1 These newly released data, from the phase 2 HOPE-2 trial open-label extension (OLE; NCT04428476), showed that the trial met its primary endpoint of improvement on Performance of the Upper Limb 2.0 (P = .02) The OLE included 12 patients out of the original 20 from the HOPE-2 trial (NCT05126758). CAP-1002 is also being evaluated in the phase 3 HOPE-3 trial (NCT05126758), in which the first patient with late-stage DMD was recently dosed.2
CGTLive spoke with Craig M. McDonald, MD, chair, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and professor, Department of Pediatrics and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, UC Davis Health, to learn more about the efficacy and safety data seen in the HOPE-2 trial. He also discussed nest steps for CAP-1002, including the current HOPE-3 trial.
