

Akamis Bio is expanding its collaboration with the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) to include a clinical partnership with the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) for advancing new pancreatic cancer treatments.
Akamis Bio and PICI commenced a pre-clinical collaboration in 2018 for investigating the use of the former’s T-SIGn therapeutics to treat solid tumours.
As part of the latest collaboration, Akamis Bio’s clinical-stage NG-350A immuno-stimulatory tumour gene therapy will be assessed along with standard-of-care chemotherapy and the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab (YERVOY).
It will also be included in cohort C of the REVOLUTION platform clinical study, which is assessing new therapeutic combinations to treat people, who were previously untreated, with metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The intravenously delivered T-SIGn therapeutic NG-350A has the potential to be used as a monotherapy, as well as in combination with other immuno-oncology agents.
The new cohort will evaluate NG-350A’s ability, along with ipilimumab and standard-of-care chemotherapy, to drive a CD40 agonist-mediated antitumour immune response in metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Akamis Bio CEO Howard Davis said: “This study will generate important insights into the use of combination therapies for the treatment of pancreatic cancer while providing additional NG-350A data to build upon the consistent safety and tolerability profile, as well as promising preliminary evidence of clinical activity observed to date.”
The company is also independently assessing NG-350A in two multicentre, open-label Phase Ia clinical trials, named FORTITUDE and FORTIFY.
In the FORTITUDE study, NG-350A’s tolerability, safety, and preliminary efficacy are being assessed as a monotherapy in metastatic or advanced epithelial tumour patients.
The FORTIFY study is evaluating NG-350A in combination with pembrolizumab.
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