Dr Coupe on the Background of IMM60 With Pembrolizumab in Melanoma or NSCLC
Source: OncLive, August 2023
Nicholas Coupe, MBBS, PhD, oncologist, Oxford University Hospitals, NHS Foundation Trust, discusses the rationale for investigating IMM60 with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced melanoma or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as key background information that led to this investigation.
At the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting, investigators presented data from the ongoing, first-in-human, dose-finding, randomized phase 1/2 IMPORT-201 trial (NCT05709821) which is investigating the novel agent IMM60 as both a monotherapy and in combination with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab.
The invariant natural killer (NK) T-cell agonist IMM60 is a unique therapy, Coupe begins. Invariant NK T cells are cells that have a broad range of activity across the immune system, affecting both the adaptive and innate arms of the immune system, he says. Once activated, invariant NK T cells can directly affect tumors, Coupe notes. Notably, there is some preclinical work showing that NK T cells can directly upregulate PD-L1 expression in tumor cells, Coupe says, explaining that they can also engage favorably with antigen-presenting cells, such as dendritic cells, which can potentially enhance their immunogenic effect against tumor cells.