US-based Allarity Therapeutics has made a decision to change tack and focus on combination therapy approaches while making the most of its current assets.
The company says the new strategy, driven by its board of directors, aligns with the ongoing shift in oncology standard-of-care moving away from monotherapies. Instead it will veer towards more promising and clinically relevant combination therapies together with its drug-specific DRP companion diagnostics for personalized cancer care.
Allarity says the shift is expected to improve the company’s future funding and commercial prospects.
In-depth analysis
It held a lengthy and in-depth analysis of current pipeline opportunities – clinical, commercial, regulatory risks, development costs and timelines, expected availability of funding. In consultation with Allarity’s senior management, its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), and external experts, the board of directors concluded that refocusing the company’s pipeline to development of combination therapies will accomplish key targets.
It will align with the ongoing shift in cancer therapy standard-of-care away from monotherapies moving toward combination therapies, which Allarity says are increasingly driving market opportunities, and which have shown dramatic increases in patient benefit.
The refocus will strengthen the company’s ability to attract additional funding from institutional life science investors, which is necessary to support the company’s clinical development activities and future success.
Therapeutic development
James Cullem, interim CEO at Allarity, said: “We are grateful for the clear guidance from our board on the best path our company can take to advance our mission to improve cancer patient care by realizing the promise of truly personalized medicine. New therapeutic development is recognized as a very challenging endeavor, with constantly shifting regulatory requirements, standard-of-care improvements as new drugs come to market, and financial and market challenges.
“It has therefore become increasingly difficult to advance development of monotherapies in increasingly competitive therapeutic spaces. I am confident that our strategic shift of focus and resources is the correct path forward for Allarity given the current regulatory and market realities and will best leverage our DRP companion diagnostics to match the right patients to the cancer therapeutic from which they will most likely benefit.”
The company also believes it will significantly broaden its possibilities for future commercial partnering with larger pharmaceutical companies to maximize the value of its pipeline assets and DRP platform technology. The same applies, it says, for improving the likelihood of clinical and commercial success of its pipeline assets.
Personalized treatment
Allarity Therapeutics, Inc. develops drugs for personalized treatment of cancer guided by its proprietary and highly validated companion diagnostic technology, the DRP platform.
Allarity uses its drug-specific DRP to select those patients who, by the genetic signature of their cancer, are found to have a high likelihood of responding to the specific drug. By screening patients before treatment, and only treating those patients with a sufficiently high DRP score, the therapeutic response rate can be significantly increased.
The DRP method builds on the comparison of sensitive vs. resistant human cancer cell lines, including transcriptomic information from cell lines combined with clinical tumor biology filters and prior clinical trial outcomes.