NEW YORK – Caris Life Sciences said on Tuesday that it has entered into a strategic partnership with newly launched Elevation Oncology to enhance and streamline patient enrollment into Elevation's clinical trials.
Through the partnership, Irving, Texas-based Caris will use its molecular profiling technologies to help identify and enroll patients with NRG1 gene fusions to the Phase II Crestone clinical trial evaluating Elevation's investigational agent seribantumab in adult patients with recurrent, locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors.
Caris will also bring to the partnership its Caris Pharmatech Just In Time clinical trial solutions and Caris Precision Oncology Alliance network to help improve upon traditional clinical trial enrollment strategies.
Seribantumab, a HER3-inhibiting monoclonal antibody, has previously been shown to be safe and tolerated. Now, Elevation Oncology's Phase II study will assess the agent's ability to shrink tumors in patients with a variety of previously treated NRG1 fusion-positive cancers. The Nashville, Tennessee-based Sarah Cannon Research Institute, which has been selected as the first location for the Crestone study, is currently open and enrolling patients.
Additionally, certain patients, especially those within the Caris Pharmatech oncology trials network and the Caris Precision Oncology Alliance network, may have the opportunity to join the Crestone study from their local oncology center without having to travel — an adjustment made to keep patients safe and navigate ongoing travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We are pleased to partner with Elevation Oncology and look forward to working with them to enhance their clinical trial recruitment efforts, with the ultimate goal of reducing the disease burden on NRG1 fusion-positive patients across a range of solid tumors," David Spetzler, Caris' president and CSO, said in a statement. "The future of cancer treatment depends on today's clinical trials, and we are excited to use our industry-leading suite of precision medicine technologies to address the challenges typically encountered in genomically driven, tumor-agnostic trials."
Last month, Caris inked a similar partnership with Merus, another drugmaker investigating a therapy, called zenocutuzumab, for pancreatic cancer patients with NRG1 fusions.