Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium – Celyad Oncology SA (Euronext & Nasdaq: CYAD), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T) therapies for cancer, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has lifted the clinical hold on the CYAD-101-002 (KEYNOTE-B79) Phase 1b trial after the Company made changes to the eligibility criteria for the trial.
“We are pleased that the FDA lifted the clinical hold on this trial. We remain confident in the potential development of not only the candidate itself, but the continued development with our proprietary TIM technology. CYAD-101 is currently our only clinical candidate co-expressing NKG2D and TIM, and we hope to continue to showcase our expertise with our non-gene edited technologies and explore additional opportunities to utilize NKG2D in allogeneic CAR T,” said Dr. Charles Morris, Chief Medical Officer of Celyad Oncology.
As previously disclosed, on February 28, 2022, the Company announced that it was voluntarily pausing the CYAD-101-002 trial to investigate reports of two fatalities in the study. The trial was subsequently put on clinical hold in March 2022 by the FDA.
The CYAD-101-002 Phase 1b trial evaluates the TCR Inhibitory Molecule (TIM)-based allogeneic NKG2D CAR T cell investigational therapy CYAD-101 with MSD’s anti-PD-1 therapy KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) in patients with refractory metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) with microsatellite stable (MSS) / mismatch-repair proficient disease.
KEYTRUDA® is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA.
