Press release

First-in-class CD39 Checkpoint Inhibitor presented at the AACR meeting
Marseille and Lyon, April 19, 2016 – Innate Pharma and OREGA Biotech today presented preclinical data on IPH52, a new CD39 checkpoint inhibitor program, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Poster #3222 presents IPH52, Innate’s humanized anti-CD39 blocking antibody. This novel antibody exhibits high affinity and specificity for CD39 and potently inhibits ATPase activity in in vitro assays and ex vivo models with patient biopsies. In a murine tumor model, treatment with anti-CD39 antibody results in a significant decrease in tumor volume, and improved survival.

Poster #3218 presents for the first time the impact of CD39 disruption on the efficacy of other cancer therapeutics by comparing their effects in wildtype versus CD39 knock-out mice. The results revealed that CD39 deficiency sensitized to anti-PD1 treatment in animals that failed to respond to anti-PD-1 treatment. The antitumor efficacy of CD39 disruption is further improved when combined with an immunogenic chemotherapy. In animals bearing PD-1 insensitive tumors, combination of immunogenic chemotherapy, anti-PD1 antibody and CD39 disruption led to complete tumor eradication and long term protection (specific anti-tumor immunity) in most animals. The efficacy of an ADCC-inducing cytotoxic antibody was also improved in CD39 knock-out mice compared to wildtype.

Nicolai Wagtmann, CSO of Innate Pharma, said: “Taken together, the data presented by Innate and our partner OREGA Biotech form a very promising body of evidence supporting the development of this new, first-in-class checkpoint inhibitor antibody. The results presented today raise exciting perspectives for the development of IPH52, both as single-agent and in combination with other checkpoint inhibitors, and we are eager to now take this first-in-class candidate forward into the preclinical development phases”.

Jeremy Bastid, COO of OREGA Biotech, further commented: “CD39 mediates immunosuppression through a different mechanism than other immune checkpoints and may broadly impede the efficacy of cancer therapies. The exciting data released today using both antibody blockade and genetic CD39 deficiency shed light on the capacity of CD39 disruption to drive antitumor immune responses, either alone or in combination with PD-1 checkpoint blockers, ADCC antibodies and immunogenic chemotherapy, suggesting broad development potential”.

For more information, read the press release.