ANN ARBOR—An Ann Arbor company that has developed a system to screen cancer patients to precision-designed treatments that will be most effective for them has a new clinical development collaboration with a Hayward, Calif.-based pharmaceutical developer.
Strata Oncology Inc. will use its precision drug development platform and proprietary biomarkers to evaluate AB122, a new antibody developed by Arcus Biosciences, against tumors, to identify patients who may benefit from the treatment.
As part of this partnership, Arcus will gain access to Strata’s drug development platform, featuring capabilities to design and conduct transformative precision therapy studies. AB122 will be evaluated across the Strata Precision Oncology Network of trial-ready health systems that employ the StrataNGS test to pre-screen advanced cancer populations to enable rapid and predictable enrollment of precision therapy trials.
The StrataNGS comprehensive tumor sequencing test is available to all advanced solid tumor patients through the Strata Trial (NCT03061305) to identify potential patients for precision therapy trials and to evaluate proprietary biomarkers that may predict response to therapies.
“We look forward to our clinical collaboration with Strata Oncology,” said Terry Rosen, Arcus CEO. “The use of these proprietary biomarkers and access to the Precision Oncology Network provide a potential opportunity to identify patient populations underserved by existing PD-1 therapies.”
Added Dan Rhodes, co-founder and CEO of Strata: “Strata is committed to advancing the development of new precision cancer therapies and we are excited to bring together two talented teams for this collaboration. This important effort leverages Strata’s unique ability to identify novel biomarker-driven treatment hypotheses using real-world data from the Strata Trial and rapidly translate those insights into prospective clinical trials across our Precision Oncology Network.”
AB122 is currently being evaluated in an ongoing Phase 1 monotherapy dose-escalation trial in patients with advanced tumors and ongoing Phase 1/1b combination trials evaluating AB122 in combination with AB928, a potentially best-in-class adenosine receptor antagonist, and AB122 in combination with AB154, a novel anti-TIGIT antibody, in patients with advanced solid tumors.
Under the terms of the agreement, the parties will share development costs for the clinical collaboration. Strata is eligible to receive $2.5 million upon the achievement of a development milestone, as well as regulatory and commercial milestones and royalties on U.S. net sales of AB122 in the biomarker-identified indication. As further consideration, Arcus issued to Strata restricted shares of its common stock, which are subject to vesting based upon the achievement of regulatory milestones within certain timelines.
More at www.arcusbio.com or www.strataoncology.com.