Lantern Pharma has announced that the first patient has been enrolled and dosed in Taiwan for its Phase 2 HARMONIC™ clinical trial evaluating LP-300 in never-smoker patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have progressed after receiving treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).

The enrollment of the first patient in Taiwan extends the recent expansion of the HARMONIC™ trial into Asia, where there is a notably higher prevalence of never-smoker NSCLC patients compared to Western populations.

Taiwan represents a particularly important region for the trial, as more than half of all new lung cancer diagnoses in Taiwan occur in people who are classified as never-smokers. Never-smokers in the context of lung cancer have been commonly defined, by the CDC and other health agencies, as people who have smoked less than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime.

"The enrollment of our first patient in Taiwan marks another important milestone in the expansion of our HARMONIC™ trial. The extremely high proportion of never-smoker lung cancer patients in Taiwan makes this region important for accelerating our enrollment with the objective of addressing a critical unmet need in a population where this disease has an outsized impact," said Panna Sharma, President and CEO of Lantern Pharma.

The scientific and clinical community is increasingly recognizing that lung cancers in nonsmokers and never-smokers represent a distinct disease entity with unique clinical, genomic, pathological, and biological characteristics. Lantern believes that this has particular importance for the Harmonic™ trial, as it underscores the need of targeted, precision therapy approaches for this unique patient population. Lung cancer in never-smokers constitutes one of the top 10 causes of cancer-related deaths globally, making it a crucial focus for therapeutic innovation.

The expansion into Asia follows encouraging preliminary results from the trial's initial safety lead-in cohort, which demonstrated an 86 percent clinical benefit rate and 43 percent objective response rate among the first seven patients. The HARMONIC™ trial is evaluating LP-300 in combination with carboplatin and pemetrexed in never-smoker NSCLC patients that have relapsed following treatment with TKIs.

Dr. Reggie Ewesuedo, VP of Clinical Development at Lantern Pharma commented, "The initiation of patient dosing in Taiwan demonstrates the continued momentum of our Asia expansion strategy. With active screening now occurring at multiple sites across both Japan and Taiwan, we expect to see accelerated enrollment in the trial. The enthusiasm we've seen from clinical collaborators in Taiwan reflects the significant need for new therapeutic options for never-smoker NSCLC patients in this region."