Inovio Announces Treatment of First Patient in Immuno-Oncology Study for Glioblastoma (GBM) with INO-5401 in Combination with Regeneron’s PD-1 Inhibitor

Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:INO) has announced it has dosed its first patient as part of its Phase 1/2 immuno-oncology trial in patients newly diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM).

As quoted in the press release:

The efficacy trial is designed to evaluate Inovio’s INO-5401 T cell activating immunotherapy encoding multiple antigens expressed by GBM and INO-9012, an immune activator encoding IL-12, in combination with cemiplimab (REGN2810), a PD-1 inhibitor developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. J. Joseph Kim, Inovio’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “GBM is a devastating cancer, and malignant glioma has already claimed the lives of Senator Ted Kennedy and Beau Biden, the son of the former Vice President Joe Biden. GBM is also the cancer that Senator John McCain and thousands of other patients are battling every year. We are proud to have treated our first patient with a powerful combination of Inovio’s T cell-generating immunotherapy INO-5401 with Regeneron’s PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor this week. This is an important step for Inovio’s plan to use its T cell-generating therapies in combination with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors for GBM and for multiple other cancers to improve overall efficacy.  In preclinical studies, combination of Inovio’s T cell-generating immunotherapies along with checkpoint inhibitors have shown to shrink tumors and improve overall survival of tumor-bearing animals. In this GBM trial, our goal is to increase the overall survival of patients facing a disease where neither the standard of care, nor clinical outcomes have not changed in a clinically significant way in more than a decade.”

Dr. David Reardon, Associate Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Clinical Director, Center for Neuro-Oncology, Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the trial’s coordinating principal investigator, said, “The Inovio vaccine platform is highly innovative and uniquely designed with the potential to generate robust anti-tumor immune responses. We are very hopeful that this novel vaccine technology will translate into meaningful therapeutic benefit when integrated with standard radiation and temozolomide chemotherapy combined with anti-PD-1 treatment for newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients in our recently initiated trial.”

Click here to read the full press release.