RE:RE:AACR Poster release date Thanks for posting this Scarlet. The first study extends the research they had been doing around the Sort1 levels in a large sample of cancerous and healthy human tissue. There's a few high SORT1 cancers added to that list. They are now doing various sub-groups within those, so maybe that will help inform patient selection at some point when done.
The second one gives more evidence around how quickly the uptake of the protein and the drug are. I'm sure there's some more important things in there, but the final one is the most interesting and will probably make the biggest spash for anyone in the PD-L1 space who wants to supercharge their drug and grab market share from leaders.
Here's one of the conclusions that I like:
"In a second study, the TH1902/anti-PD-L1 combination significantly increased animal survival over either anti-PD-L1 or TH1902 as single agents (21 days increased median survival compared to 2.5 and 12.5 days respectively). We conclude that the superiority of TH1902 anticancer activity over docetaxel involves, in part, the modulation of infiltrating immune cells within the tumor microenvironment. This is the first demonstration that immune cell infiltration patterns play a pivotal role in the TH1902-associated anti-tumoral response. Combination of TH1902 with checkpoint inhibitors (anti-PD-L1) further reveals that this may lead to improved clinical outcomes in future immunotherapy translational approaches."
With the caveat this is still human cancer cells in mice, the combo PD-L1+TH1902 had a survival rate 6-7x higher than just PD-L1 drug and 2x just TH1902 drug. The theory is somehow it's helping the immune cells getting in to fight the cancer cells right in the tumor. It's certainly a very prospective finding given it's a combo that is currently used and the standard in many cancers. I would like to think someone will want to take this and run, but we'll have to hear what the company says. These results are not very dependent on whether they see increase efficacy in the new protocol or not. This is a combo trial so that interaction is important. That being said, it would certainly be a whole lot more convincing if you also showed you had at least that 20-40% response rate and some PRs and CRs in there. But it may be enough to find a PD-1L partner to run with a small trial. Hopefully they'll talk about what they think on this in the call as it's a new interesting angle.