Chinese researchers reporting at the 2022 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium shared new results from a phase 1b/2 study showing that combination treatment with the antibody AK104 shows promise for patients with gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer.
"AK-104 plus chemo presents a potential new first line treatment option for these patients," said Jiafu Ji, MD, PhD, of Peking University Cancer Hospital and Institute Gastrointestinal Cancer Center, Beijing.
AK104 is a PD-1/CTLA4 antibody manufactured by Akeso Biopharma, which in 2020 received fast-track designation for the drug's use as monotherapy for patients with recurrent or chemotherapy-resistant metastatic squamous cervical cancer.
The new trial was a multicenter, open-label study that combined chemotherapy (XELOX – capecitabine combined with oxaliplatin) with AK104 for use as first-line therapy for patients with gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer.
Two previous studies showed that combination treatment with an anti–PD-1 and anti-CTLA4 AK104 produced a higher response rate and better long-term overall survival than anti–PD-1 therapy alone, but at a cost of greater toxicity.
"The toxicity can be really significant with the combination you see some severe immune related events. So with the bispecific antibody, the hope is that we can minimize that additive toxicity by bringing the CTLA4 inhibitor to antigen-experienced PD-1–positive T cells, and hopefully enhance the effect of blocking CTLA4 at the tumor-immune interface, rather than nonspecifically," said
