Henry Adewoye, MD, on the Phase I Trial of COM701 in Advanced Solid Tumors

In an interview with CancerNetwork®, Henry Adewoye, MD, chief medical officer at Compugen, discussed the study of COM701, which was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Virtual Meeting 2020, held from April 27-28, 2020.¹

COM701 is a novel first-in-class immune checkpoint inhibitor that demonstrated encouraging preliminary antitumor activity with objective responses as a monotherapy and in combination with nivolumab (Opdivo) in hard to treat tumor types, such as primary peritoneal and microsatellite stable colorectal cancer.

“The implication of this is we have now demonstrated that in very heavily pretreated patients, that COM701 on its own has antitumor activity,” said Adewoye. “We also have been able to show that in combination with nivolumab, it also has antitumor activity.”

“Not only have we been able to show this, but we’ll be able to show that patients actually are not exposed to significant toxicities either when COM701 is administered alone or in combination with nivolumab,” Adewoye continued.   

The phase I open-label trial of COM701 was designed to assess the safety and tolerability of administering escalating doses of COM701 monotherapy as well as of combination administration with nivolumab in patients with advanced solid tumors.² Secondary endpoints for the study include preliminary antitumor activity, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of COM701 monotherapy and in combination in patients with selected tumor types, including non-small cell lung cancer, ovarian, breast, endometrial, and colorectal cancer.

The ongoing study has found disease control rates in 69% of patients after COM701 alone and 75% of patients in the PD-1 combination arm, with 2 patients demonstrating confirmed partial responses. Moreover, as of the last data analysis, 22% of patients have shown a durable response of stable disease beyond 6 months.

“What is important in this space is that we are now seeing potentially a new paradigm of immune checkpoints where COM701 is demonstrating activity in a cold tumor: microsatellite colorectal cancer,” said Adewoye. “All the other agents that have been tested in this tumor type have demonstrated little to no activity.”

Enrollment in the COM701 monotherapy dose escalation arm has already been completed, and enrollment in the combination dose escalation arm remains ongoing. 

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork^® portion of the MJH Life Sciences National Broadcast, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences channels.

References:

1. AACR. CT031 - COM701 demonstrates preliminary antitumor activity as monotherapy and in combination with nivolumab in patients with advanced solid tumors. AACR website. Published April 27, 2020. abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/9045/presentation/10741. Accessed April 29, 2020. 

2. Compugen Presents Data Update from Ongoing Phase 1 Trial of COM701 at the 2020 AACR Virtual Annual Meeting [news release]. Holon, Israel. Published April 27, 2020. cgen.com/wp-content/uploads/COM701-data-AACR-2020-Final-27-04-2020.pdf. Accessed April 29, 2020.