Financial Review today "Investors buoyed by positive data for...

Financial Review today "Investors buoyed by positive data for Immutep’s immunotherapyYolanda RedrupReporterJun 7, 2021 – 10.01amSaveShareSmall cap immunotherapy biotech Immutep is a step closer to commercialising its leading drug candidate, “efti”, after releasing promising data showing the effectiveness of the drug in treating various types of lung, head and neck, and solid tumour cancers.Immutep CEO Marc Voigt says LAG-3 immunotherapies are now getting noticed by the biotech community. The positive clinical trial data will be a boon for the business, which is already trading up 58.3 per cent for the year-to-date at 66¢, thanks to the growing interest from the global biotech community in the LAG-3 checkpoint, which Immutep is targeting. This interest has been driven by the progress that Bristol Myers Squibb has made with its own LAG-3 immunotherapy.Immune checkpoints are the regulators of the immune system, controlling the activation, proliferation and function of the body’s T cells. There are different types of checkpoints and the first immunotherapy to be approved in 2011 by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was pilimumab (sold under the brand name Yervoy and now owned by Bristol Myers Squibb), targeting the CTLA-4 checkpoint.After market on Friday, Immutep released data from its phase two trial that combines efti with Merck drug Keytruda, revealing a 41.7 per cent response rate in non-small cell lung cancer and a 29.7 per cent response rate in second-line head and neck cancer. Second-line therapies are those given after the patient has already failed to respond to a different therapy.Immutep CEO Marc Voigt said the trial took on patients regardless of if they were likely to react to Keytruda or not, with up to a third of patients in its non-small cell lung cancer group unlikely to benefit from Keytruda because their cells do not express enough of a certain biomarker called PD-L1, which is necessary to trigger a response from Keytruda.