Affimed drops on plans to discontinue enrollment for cancer study cohorts

Affimed (NASDAQ:AFMD) shares erased gains despite reporting encouraging data on its lead innate cell engager acimtamig in patients with recurrent or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma patients who failed prior chemotherapy.

Phase 1/2 data from acimtamig in combination with cord blood-derived allogeneic NK cells showed an objective response rate of 97% and a complete response rate of 78% in 32 patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma treated at the recommended phase 2 dose level.

Median event free survival was 9.8 months with 84% patients alive at 12 months, and median duration of response was 8.8 months. Patients received up to four cycles of therapy and the treatment was well tolerated, with no instances of cytokine release syndrome, graft versus host disease or immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome.

In addition, Affimed (AFMD) reported positive trial data for a combination therapy for patients with advanced EGFR-expressing solid tumors.

The firm’s innate cell engager AFM24 with anti-PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab demonstrated early safety and efficacy results in a AFM24-102 Phase 1/2a trial, which included 15 heavily pre-treated patients from the EGFR-wildtype non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) expansion cohort.

Tumor shrinkage was observed in 7 of 15 patients. Majority of patients also experienced only mild to moderate treatment-related adverse events.

However, Affimed (AFMD) is discontinuing enrollment into the gastric cancer cohort and the basket cohort evaluating pancreatic cancer, biliary tract cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma as neither cohort is likely to achieve response rates that would meet the company’s efficacy hurdle. The company plans to advance the NSCLC program as fast as possible.

Shares of Affimed (AFMD) were down as much as 8% premarket