AACR roundup: Merus eyes ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval; Im­muneer­ing ac­cel­er­ates RAS drug

Merus of­fered an in­ter­im look at an on­go­ing Phase I/II tri­al for its bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body petosem­tam­ab on Mon­day, show­ing an over­all re­sponse rate of 37.2% in pre­vi­ous­ly treat­ed head and neck can­cer pa­tients.

CEO Bill Lund­berg said on an in­vestor call on Mon­day that the com­pa­ny be­lieves petosem­tam­ab has the po­ten­tial to be­come a new stan­dard of care in head and neck squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma.

The ex­per­i­men­tal drug is de­signed to bind to can­cer cells ex­press­ing EGFR and LGR5. At the Feb. 1 cut­off, 49 pa­tients had been treat­ed with the rec­om­mend­ed Phase II dose, though on­ly 43 were evalu­able for ef­fi­ca­cy. Five pa­tients couldn’t be eval­u­at­ed be­cause they with­drew af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­fu­sion-re­lat­ed re­ac­tions, Merus said on an in­vestor call.

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