IDO-de­rived can­cer vac­cine scores in com­bo tri­al with Keytru­da; Vir teams up with WuXi on coro­n­avirus an­ti­bod­ies

→ Copen­hagen-based IO Biotech said that its can­cer vac­cine has passed the high bar set for its in­ter­im fu­til­i­ty analy­sis in Phase II, show­ing “a sub­stan­tial­ly high­er” over­all re­sponse rate among non-small cell lung can­cer pa­tients when com­bined to Keytru­da than the PD-1 alone —which ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny in­duced his­tor­i­cal ORR of 39%.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors will car­ry on eval­u­at­ing IO-102 plus Keytru­da, with fi­nal da­ta ex­pect­ed by the end of the year. The can­di­date is an IDO-de­rived pep­tide se­quence de­signed to stir up T cell ac­tion against IDO — the en­zyme tar­get for an ill-fat­ed class of small mol­e­cule drugs. “In that sense you have flags on the sur­face of im­mune sup­pres­sive cells and [tu­mor cells] that our T cells can rec­og­nize and there­by ac­tu­al­ly get rid of those IDO pos­i­tive cells, hence a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent MOA than IDO SMI,” CEO Mai-Britt Zoc­ca told End­points News.

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