Intensity Therapeutics is a late-stage clinical biotechnology company whose mission is to help patients live longer, higher quality lives by discovering, developing, and commercializing first-in-class cancer drugs that attenuate tumours with minimal side effects, while training the patient’s own immune system to fight the cancer.
The company’s lead product candidate, INT230-6, is currently in human clinical studies to treat refractory solid tumours.
To learn more, Digital Journal spoke with Lewis Bender, Intensity Therapeutics’ Founder, Chairman, and CEO.
Digital Journal: Can you provide a brief background on Intensity Therapeutics and your mission?
Lewis Bender: Our mission is to help cancer patients live longer with less toxicity and fear. I founded the company in 2012 after losing some of my friends to cancer, and believing that I might have a strong idea for a cure.
My vision was to inject the cancer treatment directly into the cancer to kill it, versus throughout the whole body. This is a thought that others have also had, but unfortunately weren’t able to successful execute on. Due to the high fat ratio of tumors, when injected with a therapeutic which are largely water soluble, the therapeutic would be excreted from the tumor and absorbed into the lymph or blood stream.
In order to combat that problem, I leveraged my previous training in drug delivery to develop INT230-6 that uses a dispersion and cell penetration enhancer molecule to help diffuse the therapeutic throughout the tumor and into the cancer cells.
DJ: What is your current lead product candidate and how does it work?
Bender: INT230-6 is a product comprising two potent commercial cytotoxic agents (cisplatin and vinblastine) that are given intravenously along with the dispersion and diffusion enhancer SHAO. The new drug is specifically designed for intratumoral delivery. After direct injection, the drug saturates the cancer cells with the potent agents and causes tumors to die such that the immune system begins to recognize the cancer.
Cisplatin and vinblastine have dual killing and immune activating mechanisms of action. With the proper dose into the tumor essentially our drug can cause the majority of cancer cells die in an immunologically activating manner. The debulking process of our drug creates a personal vaccine from a patient’s own tumors that creates a T-cell attack of the injected and uninjected tumors.
DJ: What makes INT230-6 different from other therapeutics in the market?
Bender: Almost all drugs are given intravenously or orally to to fight metastatic disease in a systemic manner. However, our local therapy allows for the immune system to attack the tumors that we do not inject. As noted above, there are two potent cytotoxic killing agents in our product. Our proprietary chemistry makes the active agents soluble in fat and water, simultaneously.
After intratumoral injection, the cytotoxic agents disperse throughout the tumor and diffuse into the cancer cells. The agents remain in the tumor and side effects are minimal; however, the tumor dies and the immune system recognizes the cancer and attacks the injected and uninjected tumors. Ours is the only product with these properties. Our approach is a new way to kill cancer unlike any current therapy.
DJ: You recently announced the first patient dosed for your INVINCIBLE-4 Study, a Phase 2 trial to treat patients with localized triple-negative breast cancer. What is the trial evaluating and what is its significance?
Bender: When women undergo chemotherapy prior to a lumpectomy or mastectomy, they are trying to eliminate all live cancer in their tumor and lymph nodes by the time of surgery. This is referred to as a pathological complete response (pCR), which strongly correlates with a longer event-free survival i.e. a delay in the return of the cancer. Unfortunately, only a fraction of women actually achieve a pCR and up to 0.5 percent of women can die from the chemotherapy itself. By adding our drug upfront, prior to the current standard treatment regimen, we hope to increase the percentage of women having a pCR without increasing toxicity.
DJ: What are some trends you expect in the future in the area of breast cancer treatment?
Bender: One of the biggest trends were seeing is the development of drugs that can treat prior to surgery. The aim of these drugs is to enhance the course of treatment, and to increase the chances of a positive outcome. Another trend is earlier and earlier diagnosis using mammograms. Only a few years ago, only women over 50 were recommended to get tested. Now according to the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF), women should get their first mammogram at age 40 and continue to get screened every other year until they are 74.
Some women may want to start getting mammograms before age 40, especially if they have a higher risk of breast cancer. Another trend is using better imaging technologies especially for women with dense breast tissue. Yet another trend involves less radiation. Two large (1660+ patient) studies have shown that conducting one radiation treatment in the wound at the time of surgery is as effective (non-inferior) to prevent the cancer from returning as several courses of whole breast radiation. This technique is much more convenient for the patient.
