Dr Adi Diab (MD Anderson) at SITC18

Washington DC – At the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) meeting on Friday evening, Dr Adi Diab (right) presented an update on the NKTR–214 plus nivolumab data from the phase 1b/2 dose escalation and RP2D expansion trial (PIVOT–02) in patients with 1L metastatic melanoma in the cytokine session chaired by Dr James Gulley (NCI) and Dr Darrell Irving (MIT).

Nektar also held an investor meeting over the weekend to discuss the data as well as where they are headed with their early pipeline compounds.

As we seek to find new and effective partners to add to immune checkpoint blockade, there are going to be some hits and misses in the mix.  This year alone April turned out to be a pivotal month in the calendar, as chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab was a big hit in 1L NSCLC from the KEYNOTE-189 trial at AACR, while Incyte’s IDO inhibitor, epacadostat, bombed as 1L treatment of unresectable or metastatic melanoma in the phase 3 ECHO-301 study.

Cytokines have definitely garnered a lot of interest of late, with some very creative molecules now emerging to address the systemic toxicities associated with traditional approaches. We’ve been covering the Nektar pegylation story for several years now with numerous updates, so how are the data looking this time around?

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