Fresh from raising nearly $86m in financing last month, iOnctura will now start evaluating lead asset roginolisib in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The expansion to roginolisib’s clinical programme is via clinical collaboration agreements with the ETOP IBCSG Partners Foundation and , iOnctura said in a 9 July press release. The gold standard of business intelligence.
The Swiss biopharma iOnctura outlined plans for a Phase II study that will investigate roginolisib in combination with GSK’s PD-1 inhibitor Jemperli (dostarlimab). The combo therapy will be evaluated in NSCLC patients resistant to first-line checkpoint inhibitor therapy, with or without docetaxel. Roginolisib is an allosteric modulator of phosphoinositide 3-kinase-δ (PI3Kδ), which iOnctura says is “widely recognised as a ‘master switch’ of cancer.
” Inhibition of the protein elicits an anti-tumour effect, which induces immune system activity against cancer cells. In January this year, roginolisib received an orphan drug designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). iOnctura is basing the combination with GSK’s programmed death receptor (PD-1) on “emerging clinical and translational biomarker data,” adding that it may prevent or reverse drug resistance in NSCLC.
This enhanced anti-tumour immune activity would also be without significant addition of toxicity, according to the biopharma. Roginolisib is being evaluated in a Phase I clinical trial (NCT04328844) as a monotherapy an.
