January 11, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
BASEL, Switzerland – Swiss-based Novartis AG continues to beef up its immuno-oncology pipeline. This morning the company announced a $170 million agreement with U.S.-based Surface Oncology.
The agreement gives Novartis to four pre-clinical programs that target regulatory T cell populations, inhibitory cytokines, and immunosuppressive metabolites in the tumor microenvironment, the company said this morning. T cells are cells present in all humans that survey potential infections and contaminations. When T cells detect an infection, they kill contaminated cells and start amplifying significantly until the infection is resolved. An engineered T cell can in particular be converted into an allogeneic product or resist existing cancer treatments, or it can overcome checkpoint inhibition.
The new programs will be explored as monotherapies and in combination with other complementary therapies in Novartis’ immuno-oncology and targeted therapy portfolios, the company said.
“This alliance with Surface Oncology is another building block in our strategy to develop a portfolio of programs that we believe will lead the next wave of immuno-oncology medicines,” Mark Fishman, president of the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, said in a statement.
In 2015, Novartis launched Novartis Access, a portfolio of 15 medicines to treat chronic disease in 30 developing and third-world countries. Medications included in the portfolio will be used to treat cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, respiratory illnesses, and breast cancer. There are currently seven immuno-oncology drugs in clinical trials and five more drugs expected to enter early phases later this year. Novartis’ myeloid cell targeting program (MCS110), anti-TIM-3 program (MGB453), IL-15-agonist (NIZ985) checkpoint inhibitors targeting PD-1 (PDR001) and LAG-3 (LAG525), and a small molecule adenosine receptor antagonist (NIR178) are now in Phase I clinical trials. The CART program (CTL019) is in Phase II clinical trials. A STING agonist (MIW815), a GITR agonist, and an anti-TGF-beta antibody are progressing toward first-in-human clinical trials in 2016, the company said in a statement.
One of Novartis’ cancer therapies showed extraordinary promise in treating blood cancer in clinical trials. The company’s investigational leukemia treatment CTL019 wiped out the blood cancer in 93 percent of patients participating in a mid-stage trial, the company announced during a session of the American Society of Hematology in Florida. Novartis is developing a chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CART) therapy for the treatment of children with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia. During an ASH panel, Novartis announced that 55 of 59 patients, or 93 percent, experienced complete remissions with CTL019. The study did show that at the end of one year, 55 percent of patients had a remission-free survival rate and that 18 patients continued to show complete remission following one year.
Immuno-oncology is a therapy field exploding with potential for developing treatments for cancer by harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight cancer infections. The idea of immune-oncology has been around for years, with one drug, Proleukin having been shown to be quite effective, although with several side effects. Novartis spent much of 2015 bolstering its immuno-oncology pipeline through several deals, including the acquisition of Admune Therapeutics and signing licensing agreements with Palobiofarma and XOMA Corporation . The deal with Surface Oncology is another step in Novartis’ attempt to catch up with other companies blazing trails in immuno-oncology, including AstraZeneca , Merck and Roche .
In December, Novartis announced James “Jay” Bradner will replace Mark Fishman as the head of the company’s Institutes for Biomedical Research starting on March 1.
