Inhibrx breathes life into Ox40

It looks like Ox40 agonism is getting an unexpected boost, after effectively being written off by the industry as an oncology target. Inhibrx is about to take its hexavalent Ox40 agonist MAb INBRX-106 into a phase 2/3 trial in head and neck cancer, a clinicaltrials.gov listing reveals, making this biopharma’s most advanced asset to use this mechanism. The next one down, BeiGene's BGB-A445, has an Asia focus in terms of study location, while the list of big pharma discontinuations includes GSK’s GSK3174998, Roche’s RG7888, and AstraZeneca’s efizonerimod alfa (a fusion protein) and MEDI0562. Meanwhile, Pfizer’s ivuxolimab, Bristol Myers Squibb’s BMS-986178, AbbVie’s revdofilimab, Innovent’s cudarolimab and Agenus/Incyte’s INCAGN01949 no longer appear in company pipelines. Instead, the focus seems to have turned to antagonising Ox40 for use in autoimmune disease. Inhibrx will hope to buck the trend, comparing INBRX-106 plus Keytruda against Keytruda alone in PD-L1 ≥20% expressing first-line head and neck cancer, where Keytruda monotherapy is approved on the back of mOS of 14.9 months, mPFS of 3.4 months and ORR of 23% in the Keynote-048 trial.

Ox40 agonist MAbs in clinical development

Source: OncologyPipeline.