On December 14, 2016 Genocea Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GNCA), a company developing T cell-directed vaccines and immunotherapies, reported a research collaboration with Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Checkmate). The goal of the collaboration is to characterize the T cell responses of patients in the ongoing Checkmate Phase 1b clinical trial and to identify antigens associated with protective T cell responses. Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo! ATLAS, Genocea’s proprietary rapid antigen identification screening system, will be used to profile the T cell responses of approximately 20 patients enrolled in Checkmate’s ongoing Phase 1b clinical trial of CMP-001 in combination with the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab to a library of tumor-associated antigens common to patients with advanced melanoma. The T cell response signatures of those patients who respond to CMP-001 / pembrolizumab combination therapy will be compared to the signatures of those who do not respond, thereby potentially identifying antigen-based signatures associated with positive or negative patient outcomes.
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"This collaboration with Checkmate is an exciting opportunity to apply ATLAS’s unique ability to comprehensively profile patients’ T cell responses to a cancer," said Jessica Baker Flechtner, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at Genocea. "Understanding how T cell responses are associated with different clinical outcomes together with the dynamics of epitope spread, where effective tumor killing leads to broader immune responses against new antigens in the tumor, is fundamental to the design of new cancer vaccines and the selection of patients most likely to benefit from different cancer treatments."
Genocea’s proprietary ATLAS technology re-creates a patient’s individual T cell immune responses to cancer ex vivo. This means ATLAS can potentially identify – not just guess or predict – targets to which patient T cells are responding to kill a tumor. It may also allow ATLAS to distinguish between antigen candidates that stimulate productive T cell responses and those that are irrelevant or are associated with inhibitory responses. It may also enable the future development of a non-invasive assay to determine patients suited for therapy.
"We look forward to collaborating with Genocea to profile the T cell responses of patients enrolled in our current Phase 1b CMP-001 / pembrolizumab clinical study," said Art Krieg, CEO of Checkmate. "We believe the ability of ATLAS to differentiate between responsive and refractory patients in this trial could inform both patient selection and clinical trial design going forward."
About ATLAS
ATLAS is a first of its kind proprietary rapid antigen identification screening system designed to find targets of protective T cell responses. The technology solves challenges to date associated with finding targets of T cell responses. ATLAS can examine T cell responses from large, diverse human populations, and comprehensively screen every potential antigen from a pathogen or target indication in a rapid, high-throughput manner, taking weeks versus years to find relevant antigens. Because targets identified by ATLAS are based on actual human immune responses to all potential antigens, with no guesswork or predictions, by the time these candidates reach clinical trials there may be a greater likelihood of success in clinical development. This approach provides the ability to identify smarter targets for use in developing vaccines and immunotherapies to treat infectious disease, cancer and autoimmunity.