Corvus Presents Updated Biomarker and Clinical Results from Lead Pipeline Programs

Corvus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CRVS) has announced its updated biomarker and clinical results from its two lead programs, CPI-444 and CPI-006.

As quoted in the press release:

The data were presented by Stephen Willingham, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at Corvus, at the Immuno-Oncology 360° Conference in New York during the “Discovery & Preclinical Science Plenary” session, which focused on tumor microenvironment changing technologies, pegylated cytokines and additional discovery and preclinical data.

Key CPI-444 Biomarker Results 
Dr. Willingham’s presentation, titled “Blockade of the Adenosine Pathway: Preclinical, Translational and Clinical Studies with CPI-444, an A2A Receptor Antagonist for Cancer Treatment,” reviewed gene expression data of an adenosine gene signature recently announced by Corvus (or AdenoSig), in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who are participating in Corvus’ ongoing Phase 1/1b study of CPI-444, a selective and potent inhibitor of the adenosine A2A receptor. In particular, the data from the study showed a relationship of this novel biomarker to angiogenesis gene expression data (or angiogenesis signature). Such findings indicate that expression of AdenoSig was inversely related to the angiogenesis signature, which has been well studied by others and correlates with response to vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) inhibitors such as Sutent® (sunitib malate) and other tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Low expression of angiogenesis genes predicts a lack of response to VEGFR inhibition. These data suggest that patients with a high AdenoSig are potentially more likely to respond to treatment with CPI-444 and less likely to respond to VEGFR inhibitors.

“Based on these translational data, we expect that we may be able to use the AdenoSig as a predictive biomarker to identify patients for adenosine pathway inhibition and select patients for future trials of CPI-444,” said Dr. Willingham. “The gene expression data also may enable us to select the optimum patients for combination therapy with CPI-006, our anti-CD73 antibody, which has demonstrated unique immunologic activity in early clinical trials.”

Click here to read the full press release.