Woburn, MA, April 10, 2024 — Fuse Biotherapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company developing functionally-selective cytokines for cancer and autoimmune disease, today announced the presentation of new data with respect to their lead asset PD1-F18, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting being held on April 5-10, 2024, in San Diego, CA. The Fuse Biotherapeutics team will present data on April 9, 2024 that strongly supports the use of PD1-F18 as a highly differentiated PD-1 targeted IL-18 with first and best in class potent single agent antitumor activity.
FuseBio has leveraged its immuno-oncology and protein engineering capabilities to functionally optimize IL-18 (F-18), creating an IL-18 binding protein-resistant molecule with 1 million percent reduced activity in circulation while retaining nearly full affinity for the IL-18 receptor complex when targeted to an immune cell of interest. F-18 was fused onto a PD-1 inhibitor to create a first-in-class PD1-F18 immunocytokine designed for full PD-1 checkpoint blockade while safely delivering IL-18.
“A tremendous amount of effort was made to design a therapeutic to overcome resistance to PD-1 inhibitors such as Keytruda,” said Brian Rabinovich, Ph.D, Chief Scientific Officer of Fuse Biotherapeutics. “Since the immune cells that remain functional and kill tumors in response to PD-1 inhibitors preferentially express the receptor complex for IL-18, the safe and selective delivery of F18 to these cells not only augments their anti-tumor capabilities but also preserves their capacity to respond to a the drug class that placed immunotherapy firmly on the cancer treatment map.” Jeff Takimoto, Ph.D, the Chief Executive Officer of Fuse Biotherapeutics continued, “That we are able to abolish aggressive and PD-1 inhibitor resistant tumors in animal models without side effects is an incredible achievement for our team. We are excited to embark on moving PD1-F18 to the clinic and view our finding as providing much needed hope for the more than 80% of cancer patients that are either resistant or become resistant to PD-1 inhibitors.”