On April 4, 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 agreement with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) for the conduct of an investigator-sponsored clinical trial of SELLAS’ Wilms tumor-1 (WT1)-targeting peptide immunotherapeutic agent, galinpepimut-S (GPS), in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s anti-PD-1 therapy, nivolumab, in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) (Press release, Sellas Life Sciences, APR 4, 2019, View Source [SID1234535011]). The Phase 1 open-label clinical study will enroll patients with MPM who harbor relapsed or refractory disease after having received frontline standard of care multimodality therapy with study drug provided by both SELLAS and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The principal investigator for the study will be Dr. Marjorie G. Zauderer, MD, Co-Director, Mesothelioma Program, Team Lead, Thoracic Disease Management Team, and Assistant Attending Physician in the Division of Thoracic Oncology, Department of Medicine at MSK.
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The purpose of the trial is to determine if the administration of GPS in combination with nivolumab has the potential to demonstrate antitumor immune responses and meaningful clinical activity in the presence of macroscopic disease in MPM patients. The study will also investigate the tolerability of the combination, evaluate the immunogenicity of the two agents administered together, by CD4+ and CD8+ T-lymphocytes (both peripherally and at the tumor site), and gauge the degree of clinical benefit by assessment of the overall response rate with the combination in comparison with that reported with nivolumab alone in historical comparable patient populations. In a randomized, controlled, blinded Phase 2 clinical trial in MPM patients completed in 2017, GPS monotherapy, given as maintenance after first line tumor-debulking multimodality treatment, demonstrated meaningful clinical activity with median survival of 22.8 months vs. 18.3 months in the control group (N=41) and with associated sustained immune responses (both CD4+ and CD8+) against the WT1 antigen while adverse events were mainly comprised of low grade reactions at the site of the injection.
"SELLAS is excited to embark upon this trial, as we look to expand the utility of GPS in combination with PD-1 inhibitors, and specifically nivolumab. The nivolumab/GPS immunotherapy combination is well positioned to exploit the unique features of each of these two agents through potential synergistic immune-based mechanisms of antitumor action. If positive, this clinical effort will allow us to consider advancing the clinical development of the combination of GPS and nivolumab in relapsed or refractory MPM as a potentially promising approach to treat patients with this recalcitrant thoracic malignancy," stated Dr. Angelos Stergiou, MD, ScD h.c., President and Chief Executive Officer of SELLAS.
"The rationale for this innovative clinical effort is based upon the presumed immunobiologic and pharmacodynamic synergy between the two investigational agents. We hypothesize that the negative influence of tumor microenvironment factors on the immune response is mitigated by nivolumab, thus providing the opportunity for the patients’ own immune cells to invade and destroy cancerous growth deposits specifically sensitized against WT1 by GPS. WT1 is both a densely and frequently expressed tumor-associated antigen in MPM, and we believe it represents the optimal target for directly immunizing, vaccine-type therapies such as GPS against this tumor type," commented Dr. Nicholas J. Sarlis, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of SELLAS.
Data from a Phase 1 open-label clinical study of patients with WT1+ ovarian cancer in second or greater remission suggested clinical activity for the combination of GPS plus nivolumab, with a progression-free survival (PFS) rate of 70% at one year among patients who received at least three doses of GPS in combination with nivolumab (7/10), while historical 1-year PFS rates with best standard treatment do not exceed 50% in this disease setting.
GPS is also currently being studied in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, pembrolizumab, in patients with measurable tumor burden in the context of a Phase 1/2 open-label, non-comparative, multicenter, multi-arm ‘basket’-type clinical study in five indications.