Evaluation of Safety and Feasibility of OGX-011 in Combination With 2nd-line Chemotherapy in Patients With HRPC

This study is for patients with cancer of the prostate gland that has metastasized or spread outside the prostate to other parts of the body. Patients have already been treated with a drug called docetaxel or Taxotere® (with or without the addition of a steroid called prednisone) some time in the recent past. They either did not respond to this therapy or responded to this therapy, but now the cancer is progressing (growing larger or has spread to other areas of the body). Custirsen (OGX-011) is an experimental drug that has been shown to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy in several kinds of tumors, including prostate cancer. Both docetaxel and mitoxantrone have anticancer activity in prostate and are approved by Health Canada and the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of patients with prostate cancer.

This study was initiated as a multicenter, open-label, randomized study, with a planned enrollment of 40 subjects. Although two treatment arms were included in this study, no comparison between the arms was intended. Subjects with metastatic HRPC who failed first-line docetaxel therapy and required second-line therapy were randomly assigned to treatment with OGX-011 in combination with docetaxel/prednisone (OGX-011/docetaxel/prednisone) or OGX-011 in combination with mitoxantrone/prednisone (OGX-011/mitoxantrone/ prednisone). The study was randomized to assure that subjects were enrolled in each of the two treatment arms in an unbiased manner. Based on preliminary safety data from the first 44 subjects who were randomized to receive either docetaxel or mitoxantrone, the protocol was amended to enroll approximately 20 additional subjects who would be assigned to the docetaxel/prednisone treatment arm to further investigate safety of the combination.