The national kick-off meeting of phase II/III clinical trial for QHL-108, a small molecule chemo-therapy drug for Soft Tissue Sarcoma indication, was successfully held in Beijing in September 2021. The meeting was carried out in the form of on-site + online discussion, and over 30 medical institutions with their Principal Investigators, Sub-Investigators and Clinical Directors have participated in the kick-off meeting.

Dr. Liu Cheng, President of Affinity Biopharma, made a welcome speech expressing that we are committed to designing innovative drugs that can be specifically activated in the tumor microenvironment, to solve on-target toxicity issues. “We are honored to have the industry experts here to participate in our trial, and we hope to cooperate with all the experts continuously in the future to develop truly innovative drugs in China”, said Dr. Liu Cheng. 

Prof. Shen Zan, the PI of the Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital, said that he was very happy to carry out this clinical trial together with dozens of famous national professors in the area of soft tissue sarcoma, and he has expressed high expectations and confidence in this clinical trial.

Prof. Shen Jingnan from the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University expressed his affirmation that Affinity Biopharma has adopted a double-blind design in this clinical trial to objectively answer questions such as efficacy and side effects of the new drug.

Online experts actively participated in discussions

About QHL-108 Legubicin：

QHL-108 Legubicin is Affinity Biopharma’s phase II/III drug that activates and releases doxorubicin in the tumor microenvironment. QHL-108 utilizes Affinity Biopharma’s Tumor MicroEnvironment Activated (TMEA) platform to design the linker which could be cleaved by tumor specific protease, and enable doxorubicin to accumulate locally in tumors. QHL-108 is a low-toxicity, high-efficiency, and precision-guided chemo-therapy drug. In the previous phase I trial, QHL-108 has obtained good safety and preliminary efficacy evidence, and demonstrated clinical PoC consistent with our design, where it is not activated in the human blood with very low doxorubicin released, and highly activated in the tumor with high level of released doxorubicin. For efficacy data, evidence shows that efficacy increases with the dose escalation, and QHL-108 has showed therapeutic effect in non-sensitive tumors.