Singapore-based biotechnology company Hummingbird Bioscience has partnered with Merck to evaluate its HER3-targeting antibody HMBD-001 in combination with cetuximab in squamous non-small cell lung carcinoma (sqNSCLC).
Merck will provide cetuximab, an anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) monoclonal antibody (mAb), for the trial, which is being sponsored by Hummingbird.
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Hummingbird will evaluate HMBD-001’s safety, tolerability and anti-tumour activity combined with standard-of-care chemotherapy with or without cetuximab in patients with sqNSCLC in a Phase Ib trial.
This trial will begin in the second half of this year. Both companies will retain all commercial rights to their respective compounds.
When used both as a single agent and in combination with cetuximab, HMBD-001 has been shown to inhibit tumour growth effectively across various preclinical squamous cell carcinoma models.
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Hummingbird Bioscience chief scientific officer Jerome Boyd-Kirkup said: “We are excited to collaborate with Merck to study a promising, new treatment regimen for sqNSCLC patients with significant unmet need.
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By GlobalData“This is the first squamous disease setting of several for which HER3 plays a critical role in etiology and where HER-targeted therapies could potentially deliver clinical benefit.
“In addition to standard of care chemotherapy, the inhibition of HER3 or the concurrent inhibition of HER3 and EGFR has significant potential to improve outcomes in sqNSCLC patients refractory to front-line immunotherapies.”
Hummingbird Biosciences aims to discover and develop ‘transformative’ biologic medicines for hard-to-treat diseases by combining computational and systems biology with wet lab drug discovery.
The company presented ‘strong’ scientific rationale and preclinical data for HMBD-001 at the American Association for Cancer Research 2023 Meeting.
Last month, Merck and Eisai decided to cancel their Phase III LEAP-003 trial of Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in combination with Lenvima (lenvatinib) to treat unresectable or metastatic melanoma in adult patients.
The decision was taken following a recommendation from an independent data monitoring committee.
