Nektar Therapeutics has entered into a clinical collaboration to investigate its NKTR-214 drug candidate in combination with Takeda Pharmaceutical’s TAK-659 for various types of cancer.

NKTR-214 is an immuno-stimulatory therapy being developed to directly expand certain cancer-fighting T cells and natural killer (NK) cells in the tumour micro-environment. It is designed to enhance PD-1 expression in these immune cells.

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TAK-659 is Takeda’s investigational product formulated to inhibit spleen tyrosine kinase (SYK) associated with cell proliferation and the FLT-3 cytokine receptor.

Currently, NKTR-214 is being studied in several oncology clinical trials, while TAK-659 is being evaluated as both monotherapy and combination therapy to treat solid and haematological malignancies.

Nektar Therapeutics chief scientific officer and research senior vice-president Jonathan Zalevsky said: “We look forward to collaborating with Takeda to explore a range of combination therapy approaches with NKTR-214 and TAK-659 in liquid and solid tumour settings.

“This clinical collaboration will allow us to understand how we can increase the clinical benefit of immunotherapies for patients when we leverage multiple I-O modalities and target the immune cycle.”

“Importantly, this clinical collaboration will allow us to understand how we can increase the clinical benefit of immunotherapies for patients when we leverage multiple I-O modalities and target the immune cycle in complementary and novel ways.”

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While the companies will retain global commercial rights to their respective medicines, they intend to share the clinical trial costs.

The first trial under the alliance will begin in the second half of this year. It will evaluate the combination of an every three-week schedule of NKTR-214 with oral daily doses of TAK-659 in patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

Takeda Pharmaceutical oncology therapeutic area unit head Phil Rowlands said: “Based upon highly compelling preclinical data, we are looking forward to combining Nektar’s unique CD122-biased agonist with TAK-659, which is a dual inhibitor of both SYK and FLT-3.

“By combining with TAK-659, we hope to target different stages of the cancer immunity cycle in a combination regimen.”