Article
Author: Shi, Pu ; Sato, Yosuke ; Shen, Luhua ; Gemski, Chris ; Conlon, Joseph ; Abu-Yousif, Adnan O. ; Haridas, Satyajeet ; Mochizuki, Michiyo ; Thelen, Tennille D. ; Carideo Cunniff, Elizabeth ; Kolev, Vihren ; Shinde, Vaishali ; Ghasemi, Omid ; Okaniwa, Masanori ; Huang, Jian ; Shi, Judy ; Mai, Doanh ; Roberts, Emily R. ; Iwasaki, Shinji ; Bazzazi, Hojjat ; Shaw, Michael H. ; Matsuda, Atsushi ; Arendt, Christopher ; Yoshikawa, Masato ; Traore, Tary ; Menon, Saurabh ; Appleman, Vicky A.
Oncology therapies targeting the immune system have improved patient outcomes across a wide range of tumor types, but resistance due to an inadequate T-cell response in a suppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) remains a significant problem. New therapies that activate an innate immune response and relieve this suppression may be beneficial to overcome this hurdle. TAK-676 is a synthetic novel stimulator of interferon genes (STING) agonist designed for intravenous administration. Here we demonstrate that TAK-676 dose-dependently triggers activation of the STING signaling pathway and activation of type I interferons. Furthermore, we show that TAK-676 is a highly potent modulator of both the innate and adaptive immune system and that it promotes the activation of dendritic cells, natural killer cells, and T cells in preclinical models. In syngeneic murine tumor models in vivo, TAK-676 induces dose-dependent cytokine responses and increases the activation and proliferation of immune cells within the TME and tumor-associated lymphoid tissue. We also demonstrate that TAK-676 dosing results in significant STING-dependent antitumor activity, including complete regressions and durable memory T-cell immunity. We show that TAK-676 is well tolerated, exhibits dose-proportional pharmacokinetics in plasma, and exhibits higher exposure in tumor. The intravenous administration of TAK-676 provides potential treatment benefit in a broad range of tumor types. Further study of TAK-676 in first-in-human phase I trials is ongoing.Significance:TAK-676 is a novel systemic STING agonist demonstrating robust activation of innate and adaptive immune activity resulting in durable antitumor responses within multiple syngeneic tumor models. Clinical investigation of TAK-676 is ongoing.