Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm Deciphera Pharmaceuticals has commenced a Phase I clinical trial of DCC-3014 for the treatment of patients with advanced malignancies.
Equipped with the firm’s Switch Control Inhibitor platform, DCC-3014 is a highly selective, small-molecule colony stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF1R) inhibitor designed to act as a highly specific macrophage immunomodulatory agent.
The multi-centre Phase I trial will evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of multiple ascending doses of DCC-3014 in approximately 55 patients across both dose-escalation and expansion phases.
Deciphera president and chief executive officer Michael Taylor said: “We are excited to initiate this first-in-human Phase I clinical trial of DCC-3014, our small molecule switch control inhibitor of CSF1R.
“Preclinical data from a number of cancer models have demonstrated that DCC-3014 has potent macrophage checkpoint inhibitory activity.
“We believe DCC-3014 has great potential as a novel immunomodulatory agent and an important new therapy for cancer patients.”
According to Deciphera chief medical officer Oliver Rosen, DCC-3014 blocks immune checkpoints of macrophage associated with the tumour microenvironment and was found to have additive or synergistic immunomodulatory activity in combination with PD-1 inhibitor in multiple preclinical models.
The drug has also demonstrated a potent inhibition of the CSF1R in the models.
Deciphera primarily develops therapeutic agents to address the drug resistance mechanisms that mitigate the rate and / or durability of response in cancer patients.
The agents are designed to target enzymes called kinases, which are reported to be involved in the growth and spread of several cancers.
