ZIOPHARM Announces Clinical Data On Brain Cancer Drug

ZIOPHARM Oncology Inc. ZIOP is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated towards developing a portfolio of cancer therapies through synthetic immuno-oncology.

Ziopharm announced Thursday an update related to an ongoing trial of its AD-RTS-hil-12 + orally-administered veledimex that's used for the treatment of recurrent brain cancer.

The company is presenting data at the 21st Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology, which was also confirmed in a press release.

Shares of Ziopharm were trading lower by around 1.1 percent after Thursday's market open.

Ziopharm's poster presentation is titled "Phase 1 study of intra-tumoral viral delivery of Ad-RTS-hIL-12 + oral veledimex is well tolerated and suggests survival benefit in recurrent high-grade glioma." In the presentation, the company will report interim results from patients with recurrent high-grade gliomas enrolled in three veledimex dosing cohorts.

The data will show that the median overall survival was 12.8 months for patients who were given the company's therapy. Survival rates for patients at six months given the combination of AD + V (20 mg) was 100 percent, 86 percent at nine months and 71 percent at 12 months.

According to a Reuters report, Ziopharm plans on initiating a phase 1 clinical trian in pediatric brain tumors, including diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (dipg) in 2017.

"These translational data confirm the activity of Ad-RTS-hIL-12 + veledimex in the clinic, demonstrating that veledimex crosses the blood brain barrier to activate the RheoSwitch® gene switch and produce IL-12, resulting in an immune response to the tumor and now, impressively, overall survival outcomes," said Francois Lebel, M.D., Executive Vice President, Research and Development, Chief Medical Officer at ZIOPHARM.