Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium – Celyad (Euronext Brussels and Paris, and NASDAQ: CYAD), a leader in the discovery and development of engineered cell therapies, today announces that first data analysis of the NKR-2 Phase I trial shows encouraging results which will be presented during a poster session at the 58th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, taking place on December 3-6, 2016, in San Diego, CA.
The NKR-2 Phase I trial is a single infusion, dose escalation study evaluating the safety and feasibility of NKR-2 T-cells in Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Multiple Myeloma patients. This study was completed in September 2016 with a successful safety follow-up for all dose level cohorts. There were no cases of cytokine release syndrome, cell-related neurotoxicity, auto-immunity, or CAR-T related death.
Based on recent analysis, encouraging clinical update and correlative analysis, including post-infusion immunophenotyping, will be presented at the poster session of the ASH Annual Meeting:
- Title: Safety Data from a First-in-Human Phase 1 Trial of NKG2D Chimeric Antigen Receptor-T Cells in AML/MDS and Multiple Myeloma (Poster Presentation)
- Abstract: 4052
- Session: 616. Acute Myeloid Leukemia: Novel Therapy, excluding Transplantation: Poster III
- Presentation: Monday, December 5, 2016, 6:00pm – 8:00pm PST
- Location: San Diego Convention Center, Hall GH
Dr. Christian Homsy, CEO of Celyad commented: “NKR-2 Phase I trial was a safety study with the primary objective of ensuring that there was no on-target, off-tumor toxicity. We are positively surprised at reports of unexpected clinical benefit, while testing just one single infusion dosed between 50 and 1,000 times lower than our expected efficacious dose extrapolated from animal experiments. Our exceptionally strong animal data was obtained with three injections of human equivalent doses of 1 to 2 billion cells per injection, while the highest dose tested in the NKR-2 study was 30 million cells in a single infusion. These results are therefore encouraging and we look forward to triggering the next phase of our NKR-T program once European agencies and the FDA have approved our THINK trial protocol”.
Dr. Frédéric Lehmann, VP Immuno-Oncology at Celyad: “We are excited to present these data at ASH and to explore the full potential of our NKR-2 autologous therapy in our next development phase. The THINK trial will evaluate the clinical activity and safety in seven indications, in both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. It is our hope that this study will be the foundation of a robust approach to treating patients with advanced tumors.”
Dr. David Gilham, VP Research and Development at Celyad: “NKR-2 CAR T cell therapy was designed to act like a drug with short term persistence and multiple injections in order to provide a better controlled and more predictable safety profile than that of other traditional CAR-T products. The primary objective is to avoid uncontrolled in-vivo cell expansion and long term persistence thereby replacing this paradigm with well controlled pharmacokinetics. We are re-assured to note that the safety outcome of this Phase I study confirms the pre-clinical animal data generated to date.”
