Overview
- Researchers presented early results at the American Society of Clinical Oncology showing the oral drug GRWD5769, given with the immunotherapy cemiplimab, produced measurable tumour shrinkage in 26 of 83 patients in the trial.
- Fifteen patients had reductions of at least 30 percent and some individual tumours shrank by as much as about 95 percent, signaling clear responses in a subset of heavily pretreated patients.
- GRWD5769 is designed to inhibit the enzyme ERAP1, which alters how cancer antigens are presented so previously ‘invisible’ tumours become recognizable to the immune system.
- The trial enrolled patients across six hard-to-treat cancers — cervical, bladder, liver, bowel, lung, and head and neck — at sites in the UK, France, Spain, and Australia, and the study is still ongoing.
- Investigators and independent experts say the findings are encouraging but preliminary, and they call for larger, longer randomized studies to determine how long responses last, which patients benefit most, and the full safety profile.