Merus Announces Poster Presentations on MCLA-145 at Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer

UTRECHT, The Netherlands and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 09, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Merus N.V. (Nasdaq: MRUS) (“Merus”, “the Company”, “we”, or “our”), a clinical-stage oncology company developing innovative, full-length multispecific antibodies (Biclonics and Triclonics), today announced that preclinical data from its MCLA-145 program will be presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) annual meeting being held virtually on November 1015, 2020.

“We look forward to sharing data on MCLA-145, our clinical stage Biclonics bispecific antibody directed at CD137 on T cells and PD-L1 on cancer cells,” said Andrew Joe, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Merus. “MCLA-145 is the most advanced program in our collaboration with Incyte. In preclinical studies, MCLA-145 demonstrates potent anti-tumor effect and does not appear to exhibit the safety liabilities that have been observed with other potent CD137 agonists.”

E-Poster Presentations:

Title: MCLA-145 (CD137xPD-L1): a potent CD137 agonist and immune checkpoint inhibitor that does not show signs of peripheral toxicity in preclinical models
Poster #: 814

• Authors: Kees Bol, Wilfred Marissen, Jeroen Elassiass-Schaap, Paul Tacken, Steef Engels, Liang-Chuan Wang, Arpita Mondal, Mark Throsby, Alan Roberts, Patrick Mayes, Cecile Geuijen
  
  

Title: MCLA-145 is a bispecific IgG1 antibody that inhibits PD-1/PD-L1 signaling while simultaneously activating CD137 signaling on T cells
Poster #: 820

• Authors:   Paul Tacken, Liang-Chuan Wang, Rinse Klooster, Pieter Fokko van Loo, Jing Zhou, Arpita Mondal, Yao-bin Liu, Arjen Kramer, Thomas Condamine, Alla Volgina, Linda J. A. Hendriks, Hans van der Maaden, Eric Rovers, Steef Engels, Floris Fransen, Renate den Blanken-Smit, Vanessa Zondag-van der Zande, Abdul Basmeleh, Willem Bartelink, Ashwini Kulkarni, Wilfred Marissen, Cheng-Yen Huang, Leslie Hall, Shane Harvey, Chrysi Kanellopoulou, Shaun Stewart, Horacio Nastri, Alexander B. H. Bakker, Ton Logtenberg, Simon Plyte, Patrick A. Mayes, Mark Throsby, Cecile Geuijen
  
  

Posters will be on display from Monday, November 9, 2020 until the virtual poster hall closes on December 31, 2020.

Abstracts are available on the SITC 2020 website at https://www.sitcancer.org/2020.
  
MCLA-145 is currently being evaluated in a Phase 1 open-label, multicenter dose escalation study, including a safety dose expansion phase, in patients with solid tumors. MCLA-145 is the first drug candidate co-developed under Merus’ global collaboration and license agreement with Incyte Corporation, which permits the development and commercialization of up to 11 bispecific and monospecific antibodies from our Biclonics platform. Merus retains full rights to develop and commercialize MCLA-145, if approved, in the United States, and Incyte is responsible for its development and commercialization outside the United States.