STAT+: Inhibrx claims first win for long-sought immunotherapy target — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Inhibrx announced Tuesday that its experimental immunotherapy targeting the OX40 protein produced responses in patients with head and neck cancer
- The most striking responses appeared in a small subset of patients with HPV-positive tumors, and the source notes this could significantly limit the drug's clinical use
- Pfizer, Genentech, GSK, and AstraZeneca all previously tried and failed to use OX40 as a tumor target over the past 15 years
- CEO Mark Lappe called the result "really gratifying" and compared the effort to "pushing a rock up a hill" because of the long history of failures in the OX40 space
Why it matters: OX40 has been a graveyard for cancer drug development, with Pfizer, Genentech, GSK, and AstraZeneca all failing over the past 15 years — so Inhibrx now becomes the first company to report clinical responses against this target, though its commercial path narrows to a small HPV-positive head and neck cancer population.
Ask SkimNews
