Quest PharmaTech Updates Progress of Phase II Oregovomab Front-Line Chemo-Immunotherapy Clinical Trial in Italy

TSX Venture: QPT

EDMONTON, July 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - Quest PharmaTech Inc. (TSX-V: QPT) ("Quest" or the "Company"), a pharmaceutical company developing and commercializing products for the treatment of cancer, announces that it has hosted and completed a clinical investigators meeting in Rome, Italy with all of the Italian investigators participating in the ongoing, international Phase II oregovomab clinical trial for advanced ovarian cancer patients. The clinical meeting provided a venue for all of the investigators to share their clinical experiences and to resolve any outstanding operational issues for the oregovomab clinical trial. More than 15 patients have been enrolled in the 80 patient clinical trial so far.

The current oregovomab clinical trial is a randomized, multicenter international trial with 80 patients in Front-Line Carboplatin-Paclitaxel Chemotherapy versus Carboplatin-Paclitaxel-oregovomab Chemo immunotherapy to establish evidence for the clinical benefit associated with enhanced specific T cell immunity achievable by combining oregovomab with chemotherapy in the initial treatment of advanced ovarian cancer.

There are currently eight centers in Italy that are participating in the oregovomab clinical trial, with Professor Roberto Angioli at Policlinico Universitario Campus Bio-Medico Di Roma acting as the study chair. Of the eight centers, three are currently actively enrolling patients while two other centers will soon be enrolling patients as they have recently received the necessary regulatory approval. The remaining three centers are in the final stages of receiving local ethics committee approval.

"We are excited to be a major part of this international clinical trial for oregovomab," said Prof. Angioli, "The ability to use combinatorial immunotherapy to better mobilize anti-tumor immunity has the potential to help ovarian cancer patients worldwide."

"With two more centers enrolling patients shortly and three other centers ready soon, we are pleased with the progress of the trial in Italy. We are continuing to add more centers in the U.S. to further raise the profile of our product and to accelerate the enrollment process", said Dr. Madi R. Madiyalakan, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer for Quest.

About oregovomab

Quest PharmaTech is developing oregovomab, a high affinity monoclonal antibody for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer. Oregovomab targets the circulating tumour associated antigen CA125. The unique mechanism of action of this treatment involves infusion of oregovomab at immune stimulatory doses (2mg) that specifically bind circulating and local CA125. The antibody-antigen complex is taken up by dendritic cells that, after processing, present the antigen fragments to T-cells via the MHC system. The robust CD4 and CD8 T-cell response that follows has been shown to be associated with a survival advantage, especially when administered in combination with chemotherapy.

About Quest PharmaTech Inc.

Quest is a publicly traded, Alberta-based biotechnology company committed to the development and commercialization of oncology product candidates. It is developing a series of products for the treatment of cancer based on its pipeline of SonoLight compounds; and monoclonal antibodies which target certain tumour antigens that are presented in a variety of cancers. The Company has active collaborations with major comprehensive cancer care centers, and international experts, to further the growing understanding of how to use antibodies to make a patient's own tumour markers become the patient's own vaccine.

Quest believes that combinatorial immunotherapy, which exploits the immune modulating effects of selected cytotoxic agents normally used in standard chemotherapy regimens along with specific immune stimulants will lead to important commercial applications of the Company's proprietary platform. Quest is currently conducting two carefully planned, risk mitigating confirmatory clinical trials, not only to validate the superiority of the combinatorial approach, but also to design a definitive product registration study. The Company's MUC1 antibody program has the potential to permit tumour specific immunization to a broad range of additional cancers, including colon, non small cell lung, breast and pancreas.

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SOURCE Quest PharmaTech Inc.