RE:Pfizer/Trillium: How a $25M investment led to a $2.3B buyout
Complementing Pfizer's recent acquisition of Trillium's pre-clinical CD47 inhibitor asset is reovirus's ability to stimulate the release of damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) from dying host cells, such as extracellular ATP (“find-me” signal), cell surface exposure of Calreticulin (CRT) (“eat me” signal to antigen-presenting cells), and release of high mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) (activation signal for immune cells).
And according to Jeff Settleman - Pfizer Inc. - Chief Scientific Officer, Oncology in an August call on Trillium "some cancers may be more primed to undergo phagocytic engulfment than others due to differences in the eat signals that they display, such as levels of calreticulin."
Since ONCY's oncolytic virus is able to induce cell surface exposure of Calreticulin (CRT), pelareorep, besides being able to "train" the immune system to enhance the immune cells in the TME which attack the cancer, pelareorep is able to "prime" the receptivity to CD47 inhibitor activity, making pelareorep a particularly relevant candidate for combination, not only with Pfizers anti-PD-L1 agent Bavencio, but with Pfizer's anti-CD47 acquiition.