On July 31, 2019 SELLAS Life Sciences Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLS) ("SELLAS" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel cancer immunotherapies for a broad range of cancer indications, reported the dosing of the first patient in its Phase 1/2 open-label study of GPS in combination with Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), in patients with selected WT1-positive advanced cancers, including both solid tumors and hematologic malignances (Press release, Sellas Life Sciences, JUL 31, 2019, View Source [SID1234537945]).
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"This is an important milestone as this study allows us to potentially enhance our safety and activity profile of GPS in combination with anti-PD-1 therapies, particularly in combination with KEYTRUDA in multiple malignances, following intriguing initial combination clinical data with OPDIVO," said Angelos M. Stergiou, M.D., ScD h.c., President and Chief Executive Officer of SELLAS. "We are confident this study will build on our body of clinical evidence in support of the use of GPS in combination with PD-1 inhibitors to benefit cancer patients with limited treatment options. We believe that our innovative WT1 immunotherapeutic, GPS, in combination with anti-PD-1 immunotherapy agents, may provide therapeutic benefit for patients with WT1 expression. These beliefs are shared by the renowned U.S. oncologists who are undertaking this work. We look forward to studying this combination in patients with a wide range of cancers and expect to provide the first clinical data from this study in the first quarter of 2020."
The Company also announced today that Richard Maziarz, M.D., Medical Director of the Adult Blood and Marrow Stem Cell Transplant & Cellular Therapy Program at the Knight Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland, OR, and Roisin O’Cearbhaill, M.D., Assistant Attending Physician in Gynecologic Medical Oncology Service at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), are serving as co-principal investigators for this study.
About the Study
The Phase 1/2 open-label, multicenter, multi-arm study is being conducted under a Clinical Trial Collaboration and Supply Agreement (CTSA) with Merck (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) to assess the efficacy and safety of the combination of GPS and KEYTRUDA.
The primary endpoints of the study include safety and overall response rate, while secondary endpoints include progression-free survival, overall survival and immune response correlates. The study will enroll approximately 90 patients at up to 20 centers in the United States. The trial is initially evaluating patients with ovarian cancer (second or third line) and colorectal cancer (third or fourth line), to be followed by patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who are unable to attain deeper morphological response than partial on hypomethylating agents and who are not eligible for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant and patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) (second line), and small cell lung cancer (second line).
Keytruda is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA., and is not a trademark of SELLAS. The manufacturer of this brand is not affiliated with and does not endorse SELLAS or its products.