Unmet Need: It is estimated that in 2018 there were more than 17 million new cases of cancer worldwide (see ACS). Immune checkpoint therapies have become a powerful treatment route for a wide variety of cancer types and have increased the life expectancy for patients whose disease is refractory to all other therapies. Due to variability in patient response rates, a number of different biomarkers are used to predict successful responses and inform therapeutic approaches. High levels of the immune checkpoint protein programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression and high levels of tumor mutational burdens tend to produce successful treatment responses which makes these therapies effective against melanoma, breast, non-small cell lung, and bladder cancers (see UpToDate). However, the majority of patients do not experience clinical benefit from immune checkpoint therapies, and treatment durability is often limited. There is thus an urgent need for novel immune checkpoint therapies with novel mechanisms of action in order to improve the efficacy and durability of cancer treatment.
Technology Overview: Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a multispecific antibody immunotherapy that simultaneously blocks PD-L1 signaling and downregulate PD-L1 expression on the surface of cells. This technology leads to improved durability of immune cell activation compared to current FDA approved therapies and significantly lowers PD-L1 availability in mouse tumor models. The capacity to target the PD-L1 immune axis through two distinct mechanisms makes this a promising new technology that can potentially treat a broad range of cancer types.
Stage of Development: Pre-clinical data are available.
Publication: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451945624000886?via%3Dihub
