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Nektar/BMS Deal Takes Second Gut Punch As IL-2/PD-1 Combo Goes Down In Flames

 
• By Alaric DeArment

Nektar/BMS Deal Takes Second Gut Punch As IL-2/PD-1 Combo Goes Down In Flames

Nektar/BMS said they would halt bempeg/Opdivo combination studies • Source: Alamy

Competitors developing drugs targeting interleukin-2 in oncology will have more room to potentially take the market now that one of the top programs is effectively out of the game. Nektar Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb Company, who were collaborating to develop bempegaldesleukin (bempeg) in combination with the PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab), have called it quits, leaving only smaller partnerships for Nektar’s IL-2 therapy still active.

The companies said on 14 April they would end their clinical development program for the combination after an analysis of two trials, the Phase III PIVOT-09 study in renal cell carcinoma and the Phase II PIVOT-10 study in urothelial cancer, showed that the combination did not reach the trials’ thresholds for efficacy

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