Exscientia Presents Novel Immuno-Oncology Biomarker for EXS-21546 at the ESMO I-O Annual Congress

December 6, 2022

Uses multi-omics to identify a biomarker which could be predictive of '546 response in the clinic

Differentiated '546 development and patient enrichment strategy driven by Exscientia's precision medicine platform

Research highlights the relationship between Exscientia's high adenosine biomarker and prediction of checkpoint inhibitor response

Recently initiated Phase 1/2 clinical trial, IGNITE-AI, will evaluate biomarker signature and assess '546 in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor in solid tumours

VIENNA, Austria & OXFORD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Exscientia plc (Nasdaq: EXAI) today highlighted new data to identify patients that are more likely to respond to its A_2A receptor antagonist, EXS-21546 (‘546) as well as the relationship to potential impact of adenosine on PD-1 inhibitor response. The research identified a novel patient selection multi-gene transcript signature, the adenosine burden score (ABS), that will be confirmed in the Company's Phase 1/2 study, IGNITE-AI. The data are being presented at the ESMO Immuno-Oncology Annual Congress, being held December 7-9 in Geneva, Switzerland.

In this study, researchers leveraged Exscientia's translational oncology platform with transcriptomics, to develop and begin pre-clinical biological confirmation of the ABS, a measure of adenosine burden. Data was also presented showing ABS outperformed other published adenosine signatures in specificity and sensitivity for detecting adenosine-rich microenvironments.

Additionally, the research identified an inverse relationship between ABS and another published signature that has been shown to be predictive of anti-PD-1 therapy success, the Tumour Inflammation Score (TIS). This suggests that reduction of adenosine burden through A_2AR antagonism with ‘546 could result in the restoration of checkpoint inhibitor response. The combination therapy approach will be validated in the IGNITE-AI Phase 1/2 clinical trial, combining ‘546 with a checkpoint inhibitor in solid tumours.

“We believe that the signature identified by thoroughly assessing adenosine activity in primary patient samples through our functional precision medicine platform provides us with a guided way to enrich for patients that may respond to ‘546 therapy,” said Gregory Vladimer, VP of Translational Research at Exscientia. “Adenosine in the tumour microenvironment is immuno-suppressive and only patients with high adenosine will benefit from A_2A receptor antagonist therapy. That is why we want to design our clinical programmes to specifically identify those patients and potentially improve the probability of response.”