Replimune Group announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationhas accepted the Company's investigational new drug, IND, application for its lead product candidate, RP1, for patients with solid tumors. The Company intends to open its ongoing Phase 1/2 clinical trial in the U.S. and begin enrolling patients in the fourth quarter of 2018. The clinical trial is currently ongoing in the U.K., as previously announced. In part one of the Phase 1/2 clinical trial, Replimune is assessing the safety and tolerability of RP1 administered alone in patients with advanced solid tumors. Following this dose escalation phase, further patients will receive RP1 in combination with nivolumab anti-PD1 therapy. In part two of the Phase 1/2 clinical trial, expected to initiate in the first half of 2019, Replimune intends to study the safety and efficacy of RP1 in combination with nivolumab in approximately 120 patients with metastatic melanoma, metastatic bladder cancer, microsatelite instability high cancers, and non-melanoma skin cancers. For each of the tumor types other than melanoma, patients will be naive to immune checkpoint blockade, whereas in melanoma, patients both previously treated and previously untreated with immune checkpoint blockade will be enrolled. This clinical trial is a collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb, which is providing nivolumab for use in the study. RP1 is Replimune's first Immulytic product candidate to enter the clinic and is based on a proprietary new strain of herpes simplex virus engineered to maximize tumor killing potency. This is intended to result in highly immunogenic cell death and robust activation of a systemic anti-tumor immune response.
