Nektar Therapeutics Announces Six Abstracts

Nektar Therapeutics Announces Six Abstracts Accepted for Presentation at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nektar-therapeutics-announces…

“We are extremely pleased that six separate abstracts for Nektar programs were accepted for presentation at this year’s ASCO meeting, including preliminary clinical data from the ongoing PIVOT study evaluating NKTR-214 in combination with nivolumab,” said Mary Tagliaferri, M.D., Senior Vice President of Clinical Development, and Chief Medical Officer at Nektar Therapeutics. “Cancer immunotherapy holds great promise, but most patients lack the cancer-fighting immune cells for these treatments to be effective. NKTR-214 is designed to selectively target the IL-2 pathway to drive the proliferation of cancer-fighting CD8+ effector T cells and natural killer cells in the tumor without expanding unwanted suppressive regulatory T cells. Our ASCO presentations highlight how NKTR-214’s unique and non-overlapping mechanism synergizes with multiple mechanisms of action including checkpoint inhibition, SYK/FLK3 inhibition, DPP inhibition and PARP inhibition. We believe NKTR-214 has the potential to emerge as a backbone therapy in immuno-oncology.”

Continued…

Dominic
Long NKTR

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Our ASCO presentations highlight how NKTR-214’s unique and non-overlapping mechanism synergizes with multiple mechanisms of action including checkpoint inhibition, SYK/FLK3 inhibition, DPP inhibition and PARP inhibition. We believe NKTR-214 has the potential to emerge as a backbone therapy in immuno-oncology. I think this sums up the interim results for Pivot 1/2.

Lots of research already done and chemotherapeutic drugs in use on preventing the immune system from being turned off by tumor cells. Nektar now figuring out how to turn the immune system on in high gear…

What Kite pharmaceuticals figured out how to do with a cancer patient’s cells in a lab (creating tumor antigen specific T-cells and putting them back in the patient to fight off said cancer), Nektar may have figured out how to do in vivo. Reminder that Kite was bought by Gilead for 12 billion, without a single approved therapy…

To the extend that one’s own immune system is crucial for keeping cancer at bay and mopping up metastases, while chemotherapy and radiation therapy are adjunctive to that process, NKTR-214 may be applicable to a vast majority of tumor types at all clinical stages, with even better results anticipated for early stage cancers (IMO).

Jack

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To the extend that one’s own immune system is crucial for keeping cancer at bay and mopping up metastases, while chemotherapy and radiation therapy are adjunctive to that process, NKTR-214 may be applicable to a vast majority of tumor types at all clinical stages, with even better results anticipated for early stage cancers (IMO)

Yep…I think I recall seeing Saul utilize the term “holy grail” in regards to the potential of the combination of NKTR-214 and NKTR-262 and the possible abscopal effect (already observed in mice with multiple tumors…and yeah, yeah, yeah mice aren’t humans, thus not a perfect analogy at all…still, potential).

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the acquired immune system seen in vertebrates works because it is able to differentiate between Self and Non Self. Unfortunately cancer cells are a lot closer to Self than to Non Self.
The Kite approach is much more specific though whether it can be turned into an affordable therapy is in doubt at this time.
turn the immune system on in high gear. not that hard to do but hard to do without the immune system attacking everything.

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That is the magic medium that NKTR created its drug to do, and so far appears to do just that. Turn on the immune system to attack the cancer cells, but not enough to attack the rest of the body as has so often been the issue.

The proof will come out of course with more clinical data and trials but that is exactly what 214 is suppose to do.

Tinker

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Here is the major abstract accepted for ASCO presentation:

http://abstracts.asco.org/214/AbstView_214_217651.html

Price action today is because abstract data is being judged as less than optimal:

From IB Hammerstone Report: Nektar (NKTR) may be active after ASCO abstracts posted last night showed lower response rates than previously reported for Nektar’s NKTR-214 in combination with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo for melanoma.

Jack

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