Tanja Obradovic: GI INNOVATION announced collaboration with Merck

Tanja Obradovic shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Tackling challenges of cancer patients treatment after they progressed upon PD(L)-1 inhibitor containing therapy.

Medical need is very large and growing as we see increasing number of indications approved for PD(L)-1 inhibitors or combinations.

Numerous Large Pharma as well as Biotech companies have recognized market potential and have directed research into relapsed/refractory settings across tumor indications.

Today latest addition comes as Korea based GI INNOVATION announced collaboration with Merck to investigate GI-102 in combination with key truda (pembrolizumab) in patients with liver, melanoma and renal cancers resistant to PD(L)-1 therapy.

GI-102, a CD80-IgG4 Fc-IL-2v Bispecific Fusion Protein that takes the brakes off the immune response by blocking CTLA-4 and activates Teff and NK cells via IL-2.

Interesting to note is that this collaboration is not focusing on non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) where number of patients is largest.

It can be speculated if GI-102 mechanism of action guided this decision or avoidance to place GI-102 combo with keytruda within space where many other approaches within same population are ongoing nice recent review.”

Mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapy and immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer: promising strategies to overcoming challenges

Authors: Yuchu Xiang, Xudong Liu, Yifan Wang,  Dawei Zheng, Qiuxing Meng, Lingling Jiang, Sha Yang, Sijia Zhang, Xin Zhang, Yan Liu, and Bo Wang.

For more information.

Source: Tanja Obradovic/LinkedIn

Tanja Obradovic is the Vice President of Oncology Scientific Affairs at ICON PLCh. She has over 20 years of clinical research experience and has led major pharmaceutical companies for 13 years. Her research focuses on small molecules, antibodies, cell and gene therapy, and major immunotherapy of PD1 inhibitors.