Avacta shares were steady on Monday after the life sciences company developing peptide drug conjugates that target anti-tumour payloads directly to tumours provided an update on its progress during the first quarter of 2025 and upcoming milestones.
The update offered little in the way of material ‘new news’ and shares reacted accordingly.
Pipeline Developments
FAP-Dox (AVA6000), a pre|CISION-enabled form of doxorubicin chemotherapy, has completed the Phase 1a dose escalation portion of its trial.
The drug shows improved tolerability compared to conventional doxorubicin, with no severe cardiac toxicity observed. Patient enrolment has begun in Phase 1b expansion cohorts for salivary gland cancer, triple negative breast cancer and high-grade soft tissue sarcoma, with updates expected later in 2025.
AVA6103, a pre|CISION-enabled PDC linking the pre|CISION peptide to topoisomerase I inhibitor exatecan, remains in preclinical development. The compound is undergoing investigational new drug-enabling studies, with Phase 1 trials projected to start in Q1 2026.
The company will present three posters at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in Chicago (25-30 April 2025). These presentations will feature data from the pre|CISION platform and PDC pipeline, including clinical data on AVA6000 and preclinical pharmacology for AVA6103.
Novel data from Avacta’s strategic collaboration with Tempus AI will also be presented at the AACR meeting.
Corporate Updates
In January, Avacta appointed Brian Hahn as Chief Financial Officer. Hahn brings over 25 years of biopharma financial and operational experience, including 15 years as CFO at GlycoMimetics, Inc., where he led the company’s 2014 Nasdaq IPO.
“We made a strong start to 2025, continuing to make excellent progress against all of our strategic objectives,” said Christina Coughlin, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Avacta.
“We are very encouraged by the Phase 1 data from FAP-Dox (AVA60000) so far, which continue to show an excellent tolerability profile and increasingly durable responses in salivary gland cancers. We are now enrolling in multiple dose expansion cohorts, including triple negative breast cancer with preliminary data targeted for later in 2025.
“Our pre|CISION®-enabled exatecan program (FAP-EXd, AVA6103) also continues to progress toward a Phase 1 trial initiation early next year, underscoring our deep commitment to pioneering a novel, differentiated class of medicines to revolutionize drug delivery mechanisms. We are enthusiastic about the promise of a potent topoisomerase I inhibitor delivered in this mechanism.”