IMV, the Dartmouth-based drug discovery company, is planning two Phase 2B trials in the coming months that it hopes will be key steps in bringing its lead compound DPX-Survivac to the market in a few years.

Though its shares have been languishing lately, the company has added key staff members after reporting good results on clinical trials for Survivac in December and is proceeding with further trials.  

Developing “a new class of targeted cancer immunotherapies”, the company has developed compounds that help to release medicine targeted at cancer growths over a period of time. The goal of this process of gradually releasing drugs is to work with patients’ immune systems to ensure a robust and long-lasting recovery.

“It’s a very good time for the company,” said CEO Frederic Ors in an interview. “The clinical results that we had in December really created a lot of visibility for the company, and the discussions have changed.”

In December, IMV issued two statements on clinical trials involving Survivac. It said the compound had been used in stand-alone trials in the treatment of ovarian cancer that had proven resistant to other treatments. The statement said almost 80 percent of the patients showed clinical benefits from using Survivac.

Three days later, the company revealed the results of clinical trials conducted in partnership with the pharmaceutical giant Merck. They had been using Survivac to deliver Merck’s drug Keytruda on difficult-to-treat cases of lymphoma, which results in clusters of tumors on lymph nodes. The companies said the subject patients reported median progression-free survival of 230 days, compared to 70 days in other patients.

Having completed two Phase 2A trials last year, IMV is now setting its sights on the next stage of clinical trials for these two projects. The company and Merck have already moved into Phase 2B trials for the lymphoma product and these are now ongoing. IMV itself is preparing for Phase 2B trials on Survivac as a standalone drug being used for ovarian cancer and expects to begin these trials later this year.

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If trials are successful, Ors and his team hope that they can secure a path to market without full Phase 3 trials. They have been targeting forms of cancer that have so far proven resistant to other medications. As such, regulators may allow patients with no other alternatives to use these medications because they meet an unfulfilled medical need.

IMV and its partners are also looking at using Survivac to help fight three other forms of cancer – breast, bladder and colo-rectal.

The pandemic has been a meaningful time for IMV because its technology resembles mRNA, the cornerstone of some of the vaccines that are being used to ward off COVID-19. Ors said mRNA encountered problems for a number of years and had doubters, but the crisis of the pandemic brought out the resources and willpower to turn it into an invaluable medical product.

That experience gives IMV hope that its delivery platform could experience a similar type of accelerated acceptance and gain traction.

Ors said the company he oversees is completely different to the one he took the helm of six years ago. Then the company had a market capitalization (the total value of its shares) of $30 million and fewer than 50 employees. Today, IMV is listed in Toronto and on Nasdaq, and boasts a market cap of more than $180 million (even though its shares this year have fallen by one-third to US$2.11 as of Monday).  It has a staff of more than 80, and more than half its employees are female.

The company has recently bolstered its team with key additions -- Michael Kalos, an internationally recognized expert in T cell therapy and immunotherapy, joined the board in May, and Jeremy R. Graff, who has more than 20 years in clinical and preclinical trials, is Chief Scientific Officer. Ors said people of this calibre would not have joined the company had it not been for the recent progress.

IMV shares were held largely by retail investors six years ago, but now more than half the shares are owned by institutions and five different stock analysts cover the company. That makes a huge difference when discussing the ramifications of clinical trials.

“The type of discussions that we have with investors now are more sophisticated,” said Ors. “Those are doctors managing those funds, and their decisions are very much driven by the clinical data.”