Ear­ly da­ta show Bicara’s bis­pe­cif­ic helps shrink head and neck can­cers when com­bined with Keytru­da: #AS­CO23

Bicara’s bis­pe­cif­ic an­ti­body treat­ment on top of Keytru­da led to tu­mor shrink­age in about half of pa­tients with head and neck can­cer that has re­lapsed, ac­cord­ing to ear­ly re­sults shared at AS­CO on Mon­day. While still in a small group of pa­tients, re­sponse rates in pa­tients with HPV-neg­a­tive dis­ease — which typ­i­cal­ly has worse out­comes — were es­pe­cial­ly no­table.

In 31 pa­tients with re­cur­rent or metasta­t­ic head and neck squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma, 15 re­spond­ed to the com­bo treat­ment with Bicara’s an­ti­body, known as BCA101, and Keytru­da, Mer­ck’s check­point in­hibitor. One pa­tient saw signs of can­cer dis­ap­pear com­plete­ly, while the oth­er 14 had par­tial re­spons­es. In ad­di­tion, eight pa­tients had sta­ble dis­ease.

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