Candel Therapeutics, Inc. announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track Designation for its lead investigational adenovirus asset CAN-2409 plus prodrug (valacyclovir) for the treatment of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) to improve overall survival. In November 2023, the Company presented encouraging overall survival and immunological biomarker data based on an interim analysis of the randomized, phase 2 clinical trial of CAN-2409 plus prodrug together with standard of care (SoC) neoadjuvant chemoradiation followed by resection for borderline resectable non-metastatic PDAC at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting. An estimated survival rate of 71.4% at both 24 and 36 months in patients who received 2 or 3 injections of the CAN-2409 plus prodrug regimen, together with SoC chemoradiation prior to surgery was observed, versus only 16.7% estimated survival at both 24 and 36 months in patients treated with SoC chemoradiation prior to surgery alone.

In parallel, the immunological changes observed in the resected pancreatic tissue after CAN-2409 administration suggested that this investigational treatment can activate an effective immunologic antitumoral response in this otherwise ?cold? tumor.