Kura Oncology Reports Clinical Activity of Tipifarnib in Subsets of Pancreatic Cancer Associated with High CXCL12 Expression

Kura Oncology (Nasdaq:KURA), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of precision medicines for oncology, reported new findings identifying a potential association between CXCL12 expression and clinical benefit in patients with pancreatic cancer treated with tipifarnib.

As quoted in the press release:

Tipifarnib has been shown to downregulate CXCL12, and previously reported data support tipifarnib as a CXCL12/CXCR4 pathway inhibitor. Elevated CXCL12 expression is known to be a poor prognosis factor in patients with pancreatic, Iung and esophageal-gastric cancers. In the specific context of pancreatic cancer, high CXCL12 expressing tumors may evade early diagnosis by decreasing abdominal pain through the attraction of pain-suppressing Schwann cells.

To investigate the potential for association between CXCL12 expression and clinical benefit in pancreatic cancer patients, Kura conducted a retrospective analysis of study INT-11, a randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 3 study of gemcitabine plus tipifarnib compared with gemcitabine plus placebo in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.

A total of 688 pancreatic cancer patients were enrolled in study INT-11, of whom 155 reported no abdominal pain at study entry. Although no differences in survival were observed in the overall study, the absence of patient-reported abdominal pain at study entry was associated with higher median survival in the tipifarnib plus gemcitabine arm (10.2 months vs. 5.9 months, HR=0.52, p<0.0001), whereas no significant effect was observed in the placebo plus gemcitabine arm (6.0 months vs. 6.1 months), suggesting that the absence of abdominal pain may serve as a surrogate of clinical benefit from tipifarnib in pancreatic cancer.

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