Mixed ear­ly da­ta on Agios' AG-270 sug­gest com­bo ther­a­py could be way for­ward

As Agios sus­pect­ed, the pro­file of its ex­per­i­men­tal drug AG-270 is like­ly tai­lored best as part of a com­bi­na­tion ther­a­py.

On Sun­day, the drug­mak­er $AGIO un­veiled ini­tial ear­ly-stage da­ta on the drug in pa­tients with MTAP-delet­ed tu­mors. MTAP is a ubiq­ui­tous house­keep­ing gene key to bio­chem­i­cal sal­vage process­es — and is found in a re­gion that is of­ten ex­punged in a wide va­ri­ety of can­cers.

AG-270 is de­signed to in­hib­it me­thio­n­ine adeno­syl­trans­ferase II al­pha (MAT2A) — a meta­bol­ic en­zyme in charge of pro­duc­ing S-Adeno­syl-L-me­thio­n­ine (SAM), which is a com­pound that reg­u­lates gene ex­pres­sion, cell growth, and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. MAT2A ac­tiv­i­ty is se­lec­tive­ly es­sen­tial in can­cer cells de­fi­cient in MTAP, and the drug is there­fore en­gi­neered to in­hib­it tu­mor cell growth in MTAP-delet­ed can­cers that re­ly heav­i­ly on SAM syn­the­sis.

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