Portage Biotech announces clinical trial collaboration agreement with Merck

“We are pleased to collaborate with Merck, a long-established leader in cancer immunotherapy, to explore how our complementary mechanism with KEYTRUDA has the potential to further enhance long-term clinical benefit for people with cancer and also expand the eligible population to include those who do not currently receive anti-PD-1 therapy,” said Dr. Ian Walters, Chief Executive Officer of Portage Biotech. “Checkpoint inhibitors have made a paradigm-shifting contribution to the cancer treatment landscape, but many patients still have a limited response or eventual recurrence. We see potential for our unique approach of using iNKT agonists to initiate an immune response in tumors that have become refractory to checkpoint therapy or to increase the number of front-line patients achieving more durable responses, and are excited to be collaborating with Merck to advance our clinical development for PORT-2.”

Share:

More News

“We are pleased to evaluate the clinical combination of IDE892 with RG6505 in MTAP-deleted RAS-mutant PDAC,” said Yujiro S. Hata, President and Chief Executive Officer, IDEAYA Biosciences. “This collaboration aligns with our broader clinical strategy to evaluate rational combinations with assets in our MTAP-deletion portfolio, and there remains especially high

“In the first reported data from the clinical combinations of our PRMT5 inhibitor vopimetostat and RAS(ON) inhibitors, we saw extremely encouraging early results, with 92% of patients with PDAC in the vopimetostat plus daraxonrasib arm achieving an objective response, supporting the preclinical data showing synergistic activity of PRMT5 + RAS

“Non-small cell lung cancer is the most prevalent lung disease with more than 8,000 patients in the U.S. diagnosed each year with KRAS G12D-mutations. Receiving Fast Track designation for VS-7375 reinforces both the significant unmet need and the potential of VS-7375 to improve outcomes for patients with KRAS G12D-mutated lung

“KRAS has notoriously been considered an undruggable target and patients with KRAS-driven cancers continue to face limited treatment options with survival measured in months, not years,” said John Reed, M.D., Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Innovative Medicine, Research & Development, Johnson & Johnson. “We believe the proprietary Firelink™ platform will overcome