MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vergent Bioscience, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing tumor-targeted imaging agents, announced that new results from the Phase 2 clinical program evaluating the company’s investigational agent VGT-309 will be presented at STS 2024, the 60th Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, taking place January 27-29, 2024, in San Antonio, Texas.
“Our VGT-309 clinical program has produced an encouraging body of evidence demonstrating the potential of our highly differentiated imaging agent to improve standard of care surgery for patients with cancer in the lung,” said John Santini, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer at Vergent Bioscience. “We look forward to sharing the latest data from this program with the surgical and medical research communities at STS 2024.”
The Phase 2 single-center clinical efficacy study of VGT-309 was led by Sunil Singhal, M.D., William Maul Measey Professor in Surgical Research at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. The study involved 40 participants who underwent surgical resection for known or suspected cancer in the lung.* Findings to be presented at STS 2024 build upon results from earlier Phase 1 safety and Phase 2 dose-ranging clinical trials of VGT-309 demonstrating the agent’s potential to help surgeons see difficult-to-find and previously undetected tumors in real time to improve surgical outcomes.
Following are details about the VGT-309 presentation at STS 2024:
Title: A Phase 2 Clinical Trial of VGT-309, a Quenched Activity-Based Probe for Intraoperative Molecular Imaging of Pulmonary Malignancies
Presenter: Patrick Bou-Samra, M.D., Division of Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Session: General Thoracic. At the Cutting Edge: Emerging Technologies in Lung Cancer
Date/Time: Sunday, January 28, 2024, 2:40 p.m. – 2:52 p.m. CT
*This clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05400226) was supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number R44CA277890. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
About VGT-309
VGT-309 is a tumor-targeted imaging agent designed to enable a complete solution for optimal tumor visualization during open, minimally invasive surgery (MIS), and robotic-assisted surgical procedures. VGT-309 is delivered to patients via a short infusion several hours before surgery. Invented in Professor Matt Bogyo’s Lab at Stanford University School of Medicine, the molecule binds tightly (i.e., covalently) to cathepsins, a family of proteases that are overexpressed across a broad range of solid tumors. This approach, if successful, provides distinct clinical advantages and positions VGT-309 as an ideal tumor imaging agent. VGT-309’s imaging component is the near infrared (NIR) dye indocyanine green (ICG), which is compatible with all commercially available NIR intraoperative imaging systems that support MIS technologies and is the preferred dye to minimize confounding background autofluorescence.
About Vergent Bioscience
Vergent Bioscience is a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is helping surgeons realize the full potential of minimally invasive and robotic surgery by significantly improving the visibility of tumors. Vergent’s lead compound, VGT-309, is a tumor-targeted fluorescent imaging agent designed to enable surgeons to see difficult-to-find or previously undetected tumors in real-time during surgery, so that they can ensure all tumor tissue is removed. The company is first evaluating VGT-309 for cancer in the lung, with the potential to expand its application to a wide range of solid tumors. Vergent Bioscience is a privately held company based in Minneapolis, MN. Vergent Bioscience Australia Pty Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vergent Bioscience. For more information, visit vergentbio.com
