Curis has started dosing patients in a Phase l trial of CA-4948 to treat patients with lymphoma.
CA-4948 is an orally available small molecule inhibitor of IRAK4 kinase, and the second licensed programme from a partnership between Curis and Aurigene to enter the clinic.
The Phase l trial seeks to assess the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetic profile of CA-4948.
It also aims to identify any dose-limiting toxicities and establish the recommended Phase ll dose for treatment of patients with lymphomas.
The trial’s dose escalation stage will enrol patients with relapsed/refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, while the expansion stage will focus on specific populations of patients with lymphomas harbouring alterations in the MYD88 gene or toll-like receptor (TLR) signalling pathway.
Curis president and CEO Ali Fattaey said: “Given the prevalence of activating mutations in the MYD88 gene and the TLR pathway, IRAK4 represents a significant target for the precision treatment of patients with different hematologic malignancies.
“In addition to its preclinical anti-tumor activity in MYD88-mutated lymphomas, we have observed encouraging effects of CA-4948 in animal models of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) as well as non-oncology inflammatory disease models.”
In addition, Curis has partnered with Aurigene to collaborate in the fields of immuno-oncology and precision oncology.
