How Does Entolimod Suppress Cancer Metastasis? Latest Findings Published in PNAS

For nearly a decade, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has collaborated with Cleveland BioLabs Inc. (CBLI), a Buffalo-based company, to support the development of a drug that has applications as both a cancer immunotherapy and a radiation countermeasure. They recently published the latest findings from these combined efforts in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

This preclinical research, by a team of scientists led by Andrei Gudkov, PhD, DSc, Chief Scientific Officer of CBLI and Senior Vice President of Basic Science at Roswell Park, provides new insight on how CBLI’s most advanced drug candidate, entolimod (also known as CBLB502), works with an organism’s immune system. They report that entolimod, which belongs to the class of agents called toll-like receptor 5 agonists, suppresses cancer metastasis and induces immune activity by simulating a cascade of cell-signaling events involving three different types of immune cells.

The authors report that entolimod does not share the limitations that have been noted with other innate immune modulators, and also induces adaptive immunity. The findings merit further exploration in clinical trials with patients that have a high risk of liver metastases, they note.

Funding sources include the National Institutes of Health (grants R01GM095874, R01AI080446, R01CA140622 and R01CA172105), Department of Defense (award W81XWH-15-1-0081) and Roswell Park Alliance Foundation.

The study and a CBLI press release about the research are available online.