B-MS and Nektar anti-cancer deal lays out new path for combination therapy, says report

On February 14, Nektar Therapeutics (Nasdaq: NKTR) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) announced a record-breaking  partnership deal worth up to $3.6 billion involving Nektar’s NKTR-214, an early-stage immuno-oncology (I-O) drug designed to stimulate the expansion of T cells, adding to a plethora of I-O collaborations.

As companies begin to exhaust the possibility of label expansion for monotherapy applications of their PD-1/PD-L1 drugs, they have increasingly started to look both internally and externally for combination regimen candidates that could boost the clinical efficacy of their drugs and increase the potential for further approvals, comments GlobalData in a new evaluation.

With the five already-marketed PD-1/PD-L1 drugs, and more coming down the pipeline, this creates a competitive scenario in which companies with early-stage I-O drugs could find themselves with multiple PD-1/PD-L1 development partners in the same indication. Thus far, these partnerships have been largely non-exclusive. Incyte has partnered with both B-MS and Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK) to evaluate Opdivo (nivolumab) and Keytruda (pembrolizumab), respectively, in separate trials in combination with Incyte’s (Nasdaq: INCY) indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) inhibitor epacadostat in melanoma, NSCLC, and head and neck cancer. Incyte is also partnered with AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and Roche (ROG: SIX) for combination approaches in NSCLC. The lack of exclusivity goes both ways, as AstraZeneca is also partnered with Incyte’s rival, NewLink Genetics, which has an IDO inhibitor in pancreatic cancer. NewLink Genetics is also working with Roche to develop next-generation IDO and tryptophan-2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) pathway inhibitors.