Thomas McCauley, PhD, on Treating Solid Tumors With Epigenomic Controllers

“In a clinical setting, what happens if there's some metastatic site lesion that emerges? So, what we did [in the preclinical study] was wait 70 days, and then rechallenged, reimplanted, the same tumor type into those same animals, and the tumors did not regrow. So, it really shows that we've created a pro adaptive environment inside the tumor microenvironment and allowed T-cell memory to form for that tumor type in those antigens. So, it's really a significant result, and it gives us a lot of confidence as we progress through the dose escalation and towards the combination stages of our clinical trials.”

Omega Therapeutics’ MYC-targeted Omega Epigenomic Controller (OEC), in combination with checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, exhibited antitumor activity against MYC-expressing tumors in mouse models. Data from the preclinical study were presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, held June 2-6, 2023, held both virtually and in Chicago, Illinois, by Thomas McCauley, PhD, chief scientific officer, Omega Therapeutics.

CGTLive spoke with McCauley to learn more about the data presented at the ASCO meeting across mouse models of both hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and non-small cell lung cancer. He discussed key takeaways from the study, including its antitumor activity and its potential to work either as a monotherapy or a combination therapy across tumor types. He also stressed a notable finding of inducing T-cell memory in mouse models and preventing tumor growth in rechallenged models.

Omega’s clinical candidate MYC-targeted OEC OTX-2002 is currently being evaluated in a phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT05497453) as a monotherapy and in combination with standard of care for patients with HCC and other MYC-expressing solid tumor types.

To read more coverage of ASCO 2023, click here.

REFERENCE

Moore Y, Senapedis W, Gallagher K, et al. Effect of MYC-targeting programmable epigenetic mRNA therapeutics on TME and immunotherapy responses. Presented at: 2023 ASCO Meeting; June 2-6; Chicago, Illinois. Poster #437