Tempest Reports New Preclinical Data for TPST-1120 in RCC at the AACR Annual Meeting

BRISBANE, Calif., April 09, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tempest Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: TPST), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing first-in-classⁱ targeted and immune-mediated therapeutics to fight cancer, today announced that collaborators at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) at Havard Medical presented preclinical data at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting demonstrating that TPST-1120 reduces kidney cancer (RCC) growth as a monotherapy, while also showing increased inhibition when combined with frontline chemotherapy and immunotherapy. These new data further support the clinical benefit observed in the TPST-1120 Phase 1 data presented in an oral presentation at ASCO 2022.

“Preclinical data presented at AACR further demonstrate that TPST-1120 has the potential to positively transform the tumor microenvironment and expand the activity of anti-tumor immunity in kidney cancer,” said Sam Whiting, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer and head of R&D at Tempest. “The expanding positive preclinical and clinical findings of TPST-1120 reinforce our excitement for this program and support the next phase of clinical development into a pivotal HCC study and the potential to expand into RCC and multiple other cancer types.”

Preclinical data presented at AACR showed that TPST-1120 increases infiltrating cytotoxic CD8+ T cells in the tumor microenvironment, consistent with modulation of the tumor microenvironment to a more immune responsive environment that allows for the influx of tumor specific CD8+ T cells.

In preclinical models of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), treatment with TPST-1120 reduced tumor growth by 52%-56% as monotherapy. Additional improvement in anti-cancer activity was demonstrated in combination treatment with standard first-line RCC cabozantinib or anti-PD1 therapy, where tumor inhibition was 81% and 74%, respectively.

These data reinforce previously reported Phase 1 clinical data where objective responses were observed in patients with late line, immune refractory RCC treated with TPST-1120 and the immune therapy, nivolumab, and complement the positive Phase 1b/2 data reported in October 2023 from a global randomized study of TPST-1120 in combination with atezolizumab and bevacizumab in first-line patients with advanced HCC, which showed clinical superiority of the TPST-1120 arm over the control arm across multiple study endpoints and relevant biomarker-defined patient subpopulations.