On June 3, 2019 Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) reported the first clinical results from a Phase 1 study evaluating investigational AMG 510, the first KRASG12C inhibitor to reach the clinical stage (Press release, Amgen, JUN 3, 2019, View Source;p=RssLanding&cat=news&id=2400393 [SID1234536796]). In the trial, there were no dose-limiting toxicities at tested dose levels. AMG 510 showed anti-tumor activity when administered as a monotherapy in patients with locally-advanced or metastatic KRASG12C mutant solid tumors. These data are being presented during an oral session at the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) in Chicago.

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"KRAS has been a target of active exploration in cancer research since it was identified as one of the first oncogenes more than 30 years ago, but it remained undruggable due to a lack of traditional small molecule binding pockets on the protein. AMG 510 seeks to crack the KRAS code by exploiting a previously hidden groove on the protein surface," said David M. Reese, M.D., executive vice president of Research and Development at Amgen. "By irreversibly binding to cysteine 12 on the mutated KRAS protein, AMG 510 is designed to lock it into an inactive state. With high selectivity for KRASG12C, we believe investigational AMG 510 has high potential as both a monotherapy and in combination with other targeted and immune therapies."

The Phase 1, first-in-human, open-label multicenter study enrolled 35 patients with various tumor types (14 non-small cell lung cancer [NSCLC], 19 colorectal cancer [CRC] and two other). Eligible patients were heavily pretreated with at least two or more prior lines of treatment, consistent with their tumor type and stage of disease. The primary endpoint is safety, and key secondary endpoints include pharmacokinetics, objective response rate (assessed every six weeks), duration of response and progression-free survival. Patients were enrolled in four dose cohorts – 180 mg, 360 mg, 720 mg and 960 mg, taken orally once a day.

Five out of 10 evaluable patients with NSCLC experienced a partial response (PR), and another four had stable disease (SD), for a disease control rate (DCR) of 90 percent (9/10).1 All five patients with response to therapy had a treatment duration of 7.3-27.4 weeks at data cutoff and remain active on treatment. One patient with PR improved further to a complete response of the target lesions at week 18, post data cutoff.

In addition, 13 of 18 evaluable patients with CRC achieved SD, with the majority of CRC patients treated at the first two dose levels. Twenty-six patients remain on study and nine have discontinued.

Treatment-related adverse events (AEs) were primarily grade 1 events (approximately 68 percent). Two grade 3 treatment-related AEs were reported (anemia and diarrhea). No grade 4 treatment-related AEs and no serious treatment-related AEs were reported. Enrollment into dose expansion is underway.

"While there’s been significant progress in treating solid tumor cancers overall with targeted therapies, patients with the KRASG12C mutation have not benefited from these advances," said Marwan G. Fakih, M.D., clinical study investigator and co-director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Program, City of Hope, Duarte, Calif. "In this early Phase 1 trial, investigational AMG 510 showed encouraging anti-tumor activity. We look forward to further investigating AMG 510 with the goal of closing the treatment gap for patients with this type of mutation."

Amgen Webcast Investor Meeting
Amgen will host a webcast investor meeting at ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper) 2019 on Monday, June 3 at 6:30 p.m. CT. David M. Reese, M.D., executive vice president of Research and Development at Amgen, along with members of Amgen’s clinical development team and clinical investigators, will participate at the investor meeting to discuss Amgen’s oncology program and data presented at ASCO (Free ASCO Whitepaper) 2019. Live audio of the conference call will be broadcast over the internet simultaneously and will be available to members of the news media, investors and the general public.

The webcast, as with other selected presentations regarding developments in Amgen’s business given at certain investor and medical conferences, can be accessed on Amgen’s website, www.amgen.com, under Investors. Information regarding presentation times, webcast availability and webcast links are noted on Amgen’s Investor Relations Events Calendar. The webcast will be archived and available for replay for at least 90 days after the event.

About KRAS
The subject of more than three decades of research, the RAS gene family are the most frequently mutated oncogenes in human cancers.2,3 Within this family, KRAS is the most prevalent variant and is particularly common in solid tumors.3 A specific mutation known as KRASG12C accounts for approximately 13 percent of non-small cell lung cancers, three to five percent of colorectal cancers and one to two percent of numerous other solid tumors.4 Approximately 30,000 patients are diagnosed each year in the United States with KRASG12C driven cancers.5 Amgen is exploring the potential of KRASG12C inhibition across a broad variety of tumor types.

On June 3, 2019 SELLAS Life Sciences Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLS) ("SELLAS" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel cancer immunotherapies for a broad range of cancer indications, reported results from a preplanned analysis of immunologic responses in the cohort of patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) from the prospective, randomized, single-blinded, controlled Phase 2b independent investigator-sponsored clinical trial of nelipepimut-S (NPS) +/- trastuzumab (Herceptin) targeting HER2 low-expressing breast cancer patients (Press release, Sellas Life Sciences, JUN 3, 2019, View Source [SID1234536812]). This analysis was presented on June 2, 2019 at the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) in Chicago, IL.

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"Effective adjuvant/maintenance therapy strategies are urgently needed to prevent recurrence or to prolong remission in patients with TNBC after successful frontline standard therapy for early-stage disease. In this setting, immune-directed therapy with NPS, a peptide vaccine targeting HER2, a protein expressed at low levels in TNBC, along with trastuzumab, led to high rates of antigen-specific immunization by both ex vivo and in vivo validated measures, corroborating the immunobiological synergy between these two agents," said Elizabeth A. Mittendorf, MD, PhD, Rob and Karen Hale Distinguished Chair in Surgical Oncology, Director of Research, Breast Surgical Oncology Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Director, Breast Immuno-Oncology Program Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, and the Principal Investigator of the Phase 2b study.

"These ex vivo and in vivo results in TNBC patients, particularly the newly discovered correlation between mounting an immune response and remaining clinically relapse-free over time, provide a solid mechanistic rationale for the previously observed clinically meaningful and statistically significant prolongation in disease-free survival (DFS), and the significant decrease in the frequency of relapses identified by standard clinical follow-up, in favor of NPS plus trastuzumab," said Angelos M. Stergiou, MD, ScD h.c., President and Chief Executive Officer of SELLAS.

"As we continue discussions with potential partners and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on this promising program, we remain excited with these data demonstrated in the TNBC population," added Dr. Stergiou.

The Phase 2b study enrolled patients with HER2-low expressing breast cancer who remained clinically disease-free after completion of frontline standard of care therapy. Patients were selected to harbor node-positive disease and/or TNBC, as well as expressing human leukocyte antigen (HLA) types indicated for NPS administration (A2, A3, A24/26; pertinent to approx. 85% of the global population). Patients were randomized to placebo with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) (n=139) or NPS with GM-CSF (n=136), while they all received trastuzumab every 3 weeks for one year. The Company previously reported results of the final analysis of efficacy and safety outcomes in the cohort of patients whose tumors did not express hormone receptors, TNBC (n=97). DFS of patients treated with NPS plus trastuzumab (n=53) was 92.6% compared to 70.2% for those treated with trastuzumab alone (n=44) and represented a clinically meaningful and a statistically significant improvement with the combination therapy, p=0.01. This was associated with a statistically significant reduction by 71.9% (p=0.01) in the frequency of clinically detected recurrences in favor of the combination in the TNBC cohort.

Ninety-one of the 97 TNBC patients in this clinical study were analyzed for immune responses (IR) at five timepoints, 51 of whom received the combination therapy. IR were evaluated ex vivo by clonal expansion of antigen NPS-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) by dextramer-staining/flow cytometry at predefined time points over three years. In vivo IR were assessed by cutaneous delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) reactions periodically, by measuring the diameter of skin induration (in mm) post intradermal NPS treatment.

NPS plus trastuzumab-treated TNBC patients exhibited increases in CTL frequencies compared with baseline by 1.1-, 1.73-, and 2.86-fold at 18, 24 and 30 months, respectively. The mean CTL frequencies in these patients increased from 29±0.1 per 10-4 at baseline to 112±2.6% at 30 months, a 2.86-fold difference that was highly clinically indicative (p = 0.058), as compared with patients receiving trastuzumab only, whereby CTL frequencies were 20±0.1 per 10-4 at baseline compared with 52±1.6 per 10-4 at 30 months, a 1.6-fold non-significant difference (p=0.70). Three patients in the combination arm recurred (5.9%) as compared with 12 (30%) in the trastuzumab-alone arm. TNBC patients treated with NPS plus trastuzumab whose disease recurred did not mount an IR by ex vivo assessment (absolute CTL frequency change) or by in vivo DTH (no change in skin induration), while non-recurrent patients mounted both vigorous NPS-specific clonal CTL expansion and enhanced in vivo DTH.

On June 3, 2019 Exicure, Inc. (OTCQB: XCUR), the pioneer in gene regulatory and immunotherapeutic drugs utilizing spherical nucleic acid (SNA) constructs, reported that its CFO, David Snyder, will give a company presentation on Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 at 3:40-4:00 pm MDT at the LD Micro 9th Invitational Conference (Press release, Exicure, JUN 3, 2019, View Source [SID1234536833]). The presentation will be made at Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel in Los Angeles.

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A live audio webcast will be available on the Investors section of Exicure’s website: www.exicuretx.com. The webcast will be archived for approximately 30 days following the event.

On June 3, 2019 Dynavax Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: DVAX), reported that Ryan Spencer, Senior Vice President, Commercial, and Interim Co-President, will present at the William Blair & Co. Annual Growth Stock Conference on Thursday, June 6, at 9:20 a.m. C.T (Press release, Dynavax Technologies, JUN 3, 2019, View Source [SID1234536850]).

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The presentation will be webcast and may be accessed at the "Events & Presentations" section of the Company’s website at View Source

On June 2, 2019 BerGenBio ASA (OSE: BGBIO) a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel, selective AXL kinase inhibitors for multiple cancer indications, reported updated data from its Phase II clinical trial (BGBC008, NCT03184571) with bemcentinib and Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab) in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) in Chicago, Illinois (31 May – 4 June 2019) (Press release, BerGenBio, JUN 2, 2019, View Source [SID1234536748]).

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At data cut off, 35 out of 46 enrolled patients were evaluable; 58% were AXL +ve, and 53% were PD-L1 negative (<1%TPS), and a further 39% were PD-L1 (1-49% TPS). An objective response rate of 40% was achieved in AXL +ve patients, irrespective of the patients PD-L1 score; and an overall response rate of 29% was achieved. The median survival rate of 12.2 months was observed at the time of data cut-off, significantly surpassing what has been shown historically in second line treatment with PD-1 inhibitor monotherapy.

The combination treatment of bemcentinib and pembrolizumab was overall well-tolerated; the most common adverse events included transaminase increase (35%), fatigue (30%), and diarrhoea (26%). No grade 5 treatment related adverse events were reported and all events were reversible.

Principal investigator Enriqueta Filip, Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona
" Following the rapid uptake of checkpoint inhibitors in first-line lung cancer therapy, treatment options for NSCLC cancer patients that have not responded to anti-PD-1 therapies such as KEYTRUDA represent a significant unmet medical need. These data, which suggest that combination therapy with bemcentinib has the potential to enhance patient responses to these novel agents, particularly in patients with no or limited expression of PD-L1, is a very significant and encouraging development."

Richard Godfrey, Chief Executive Officer of BerGenBio, commented: "The clinical activity we are presenting here today surpasses what has been shown historically in previously-treated, PD-L1 low patients on PD-1 inhibitor monotherapy, and supports the hypothesis that AXL is implicated in the failure of anti-PD-L1 therapies. Further investigation is warranted and having recently extended the trial to include patients showing disease progression on checkpoint inhibitors, we will continue to test this hypothesis and look forward to providing further updates during 2019."

-END–

About NSCLC
It is estimated that more than 230,000 new cases of lung cancer have been diagnosed in the US in 2018 and it is the leading cause of cancer deaths. 65% of non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) are of adenocarcinoma pathology. Although various treatments exist for NSCLC, they are often curtailed by acquired resistance to therapy and immune evasion. Novel treatments overcoming these mechanisms in NSCLC are urgently required.

About the BGBC008 trial
The BGBC008 trial is a Phase II open-label study of bemcentinib in combination with KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab) in previously treated patients with advanced adenocarcinoma of the lung, run at centres in the US, UK, Spain and Norway. The objective of the trial is to determine the anti-tumour activity of this novel drug combination and responses will be correlated with biomarker status (including AXL kinase and PD-L1 expression).

Patients eligible for participation in Cohort A must have progressed on or after prior therapy excluding immunotherapy whereas patients in Cohort B will be actively progressing on a therapy regimen containing an anti-PD(L)-1 therapy.

Both cohorts follow a two-stage design, Cohort A has previously successfully progressed into the second stage after meeting its first efficacy endpoint. Cohort B will evaluate advancement into stage 2 after 13 patients have been assessed for response.

For more information please access trial NCT03184571 at www.clinicaltrials.gov.