Immune oncology therapeutics has created a revolution in treatment for patients. As wonderful as this progress is, it has still not led to cures for most people and more needs to be done. For example, checkpoint inhibitors have dramatically improved survival in melanoma (one of the best responding cancers) from 1-2 years to potentially 5-10. But after 5-10 years, survival is only 20% and most patients have succumbed to their cancer. Current immune oncology agents work in adaptive immunity. The other major arm of immunity, innate immunity, has not been enhanced with a therapeutic. We believe adding an agent that works to strengthen innate immunity and treating along with adaptive immunity mo...

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Immune oncology therapeutics has created a revolution in treatment for patients. As wonderful as this progress is, it has still not led to cures for most people and more needs to be done. For example, checkpoint inhibitors have dramatically improved survival in melanoma (one of the best responding cancers) from 1-2 years to potentially 5-10. But after 5-10 years, survival is only 20% and most patients have succumbed to their cancer. Current immune oncology agents work in adaptive immunity. The other major arm of immunity, innate immunity, has not been enhanced with a therapeutic. We believe adding an agent that works to strengthen innate immunity and treating along with adaptive immunity modulators may dramatically increase the breadth of cancers which respond, and the durability with immune oncology agents. An immune suppressive protein known as ENPP1 is what cancers highly upregulate to choke off innate immunity and is the only known innate immune checkpoint. SR-8541A is our ENPP1 inhibitor and this award request is to study it in a phase 1-2 clinical trial against microsatellite stable colorectal cancer (MSS CRC) with leading 2nd generation PD-1 inhibitor balstilimab and Fc enhanced CTLA-4 inhibitor botensilimab (Agenus). Standard of care response in MSS CRC is about 10%. balstilimab and botensilimab reported a 24% response in 2022. We believe by adding SR-8541A to these agents we can do much better in MSS CRC and bring hope and value to these cancer sufferers.

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