Monopar Therapeutics Inc. announced the positive recommendation from its safety review committee to advance to the fifth dose level (650 mg/m2) in its camsirubicin Phase 1b trial in patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma (ASTS). This decision was made following a review of safety data from the patients in the first four dose cohorts. Camsirubicin is a novel, proprietary analog of the widely used cancer drug doxorubicin.

It has been previously investigated in ASTS patients in a Phase 1 and a single-arm Phase 2 clinical trial. In these studies, no camsirubicin-treated patients developed the irreversible cardiotoxicity common to doxorubicin at higher cumulative doses. The most frequent adverse event observed in the Phase 1 study was neutropenia, which was mitigated in the Phase 2 study using prophylactic G-CSF.

Based on encouraging clinical results from prior clinical trials, the current Phase 1b trial is designed to test camsirubicin at progressively higher doses than previously administered while using concomitant prophylactic G-CSF to prevent neutropenia. Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are a diverse type of cancer that typically develop in the connective tissue of the body.