CHECKPOINT INHIBITORS IMPROVEMENT FOR THE TREATMENT OF CANCER

Cancer immunotherapy based on immune checkpoint blockades (ICBs), represented by the anti-programmed death 1 antibody (anti-PD-1), is one of the major revolutions in cancer treatment of the last decade. ICB-based treatment of patients with incurable and advanced tumors showed significant improvement in patient survival. However, clinical data revealed that only a few patients benefit from significant remissions achieved by ICBs, and the majority of them have a short-term benefit or no benefit at all. To extend the use of ICB, clinical approaches are now pushing towards combining several ICBs. But the main drawback of combining several ICBs is their cytotoxic side effects due to disruption of the fine-tuned balance of the immune system. Therefore, new combination therapeutic strategies are urgently needed to extend the clinical benefit of ICBs to a large number of cancer patients and improve survival outcomes. This project will tackle this challenging clinical need by designing and
assessing innovative immunotherapy combination approaches based on combining anti-PD-1 with small innovative molecules, for translation to clinical practice. The present project is powered and driven by synergistic and existing
cooperation between a biotech company (AC BioScience), an academic research institute (LIH), and the leading European cancer center for immunotherapy (Gustave Roussy). The overall outcome of the project is to establish
the preclinical proof of concept of innovative immunotherapy combination approaches with the ultimate aim to submit an “Investigational Medicinal Product Dossier” to the “European Medicines Agency” allowing the setup of a phase 1-2a clinical trial.