Benzinga | Sep 16, 2021 07:05AM EDT

Instil Bio Presents Subset Analysis Of Patients With Checkpoint-Refractory Advanced Melanoma From Compassionate Use Study At 2021 ESMO Congress

Instil Bio, Inc. ("Instil") (NASDAQ:TIL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing tumor infiltrating lymphocyte, or TIL, therapies for the treatment of patients with cancer, announced today that a subset analysis of treatment outcomes with unselected autologous tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in patients with checkpoint inhibitor-refractory advanced cutaneous melanoma was presented today at the 2021 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, taking place virtually from September 16-21, 2021.



Among the 12 patients featured in this subset analysis who had disease progression following treatment with a PD-1 inhibitor, all were also resistant to CTLA-4 inhibition with ipilimumab. Seven (58%) patients achieved an objective response, with 1 (8%) achieving a complete response. With a median duration of follow-up of 45.5 months, the median overall survival was 21.3 months with nearly half of patients experiencing long term survival. Side effects of treatment were largely transient, manageable with supportive care, and generally attributable to the lymphodepleting chemotherapy regimen and post-TIL high-dose IL-2 treatment. Outcomes in this highly treatment-refractory subgroup were similar to those observed in all 21 treated patients, with high response rates and an expected safety profile.

"The results of this analysis of a difficult-to-treat subgroup of patients further demonstrate that TIL therapy may offer benefit to patients with advanced melanoma once standard treatments have failed," said Zachary Roberts, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Instil Bio. "We eagerly anticipate building on these results in DELTA-1, our Phase 2 study of ITIL-168 in patients with advanced melanoma."