Parker Institute presents its first results — and touts early success against pancreatic cancer

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy — the $250 million venture from Napster founder and Facebook investor Sean Parker — just presented its first clinical trial results. The results were from a Phase 1 trial testing a combination of two chemotherapy drugs along with two immunotherapies in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Some received the chemotherapy drugs and one of the immunotherapy drugs, an experimental antibody called APX005M. Others got that regimen plus Opdivo, the checkpoint inhibitor from Bristol-Myers Squibb. More than half of the 24 patients who could be evaluated showed partial tumor shrinkage, with some responses lasting 10 months or more. The best responses were seen in the patients treated with all four drugs. “I don’t want to look too far down the road, but these results are impressive,” Dr. Robert Vonderheide, the Parker Institute investigator in charge of the trial, told STAT.