Two more reasons for GSK to be wary of Tim-3

The pressure on the phase 3 Costar Lung study of GSK's anti-Tim-3 MAb cobolimab just ratcheted up, with AstraZeneca revealing the discontinuation of its own shot at the Tim-3 mechanism, sabestomig. The move was announced in a pipeline update at Astra's fourth-quarter financials presentation on Thursday, and followed last month's culling of another big pharma Tim-3 hopeful, Bristol Myers Squibb's BMS-986258, revealed in a quiet termination on the clinicaltrials.gov registry. Astra's decision has been a while coming, as sabestomig had posted mediocre efficacy data at ESMO 2023. Its discontinuation means that GSK's cobolimab remains almost the last significant anti-Tim-3 MAb in development, the only other remaining clinical-stage project at a large biopharma company being BeiGene's surzebiclimab, in phase 1/2. During its financials update this week GSK listed cobolimab as a key oncology asset, and said Costar Lung, which combines it with Jemperli and chemo in post-PD-(L)1 NSCLC, was due to read out in the first half of this year, a timeline that has slipped from late 2024. This slight delay isn't as portentous as the fact that every other big pharma company, including Roche, Novartis, Lilly and now Bristol and Astra, has now got out of Tim-3.

The clinical-stage Tim-3 pipeline

Notes: all are monospecific anti-Tim-3 MAbs except *PD-1 x Tim-3 bispecific, and **PD-L1 x Tim-3 bispecific. Source: OncologyPipeline.