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ASCO conference: Merck KGaA cancer drug meets safety standards in early study

Merck KGaA said its cancer therapy M7824 showed a manageable safety profile in the dose escalation portion of an early stage study on patients with solid tumors who have had previous treatment.

The main goal of the study is to test M7824 at different dose levels to check whether it is safe and well-tolerated when given once every two weeks. The results presented at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting were from a trial of non-small cell lung cancer patients who were on their second line of treatment.

The drug targets a protein called the transforming growth factor beta, or TGF-ß, which normally suppresses tumors, but can be co-opted by cancer cells to evade immune responses. As of Oct. 25, 2017, 80 patients had received M7824.

Twenty patients experienced mild treatment-related adverse events, six patients discontinued treatment due to the adverse events, and there were no deaths reported.

The study's other main goal besides safety is to determine a maximum tolerated dose, which was not reached. Patients received M7824 in doses of 1, 3, 10, 20 or 30 milligrams per kilogram.

Merck said it will continue evaluating M7824 as a treatment for HPV-associated cancers in phase 1 and phase 2 studies.

The 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is expected to bring together more than 32,000 professionals from all over the world, with more than 2,500 study abstracts to be presented on site and an additional 3,350 abstracts to be published online.