Regeneron and Inovio have announced a collaboration to investigate a novel three-way immunotherapy combination aimed at treating glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), an aggressive and difficult-to-treat brain tumor. This partnership will see Regeneron contributing its PD-1 inhibitor, REGN2810, to be used alongside two of Inovio's candidates: INO-5401, a T cell activating immunotherapy encoding multiple antigens, and INO-9012, an immune activator encoding IL-12.
This initiative comes at a time when the need for effective GBM treatments is critically high, with current standard care offering a prognosis of just 15 months and a five-year survival rate of less than 3%. The collaboration aims to explore whether combining these therapies can extend survival for patients newly diagnosed with GBM.
David Reardon, MD, Clinical Director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, highlighted the potential of this approach, stating, "Certain immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown efficacy in certain cancers, but evidence increasingly suggests that the benefit of checkpoint inhibitors can be enhanced when used in combination with therapies that generate T cells."
Inovio's innovative immunotherapy platform, which has demonstrated the ability to generate antigen-specific T cells in various disease areas, including cancer, will be pivotal in this study. The trial will be solely managed by Inovio, with Regeneron supplying REGN2810. Both companies will jointly conduct immunological analyses to support the study.
J. Joseph Kim, PhD, Inovio's president and chief executive, expressed optimism about the combination regimen approach in immuno-oncology, emphasizing the strategy of using Inovio's immunotherapies to generate killer T-cells and then blocking T cell suppression via checkpoint inhibition.
This collaboration represents a significant step forward in the search for more effective treatments for GBM, a disease that has seen limited progress in improving patient outcomes despite ongoing research and development efforts.
