Innate Pharma has received a $15 million milestone payment from Bristol-Myers Squibb under its licensing agreement for lirilumab, for the continued exploration of lirilumab in combination with Opdivo (nivolumab).
 
This milestone payment follows encouraging preliminary results from the cohort of patients with Squamous Cell Cancer of the Head and Neck (SCCHN) of a Phase I/II trial. These interim efficacy results indicate that targeting both pathways with lirilumab and nivolumab respectively may provide enhanced clinical activity, particularly in PD-L1 positive tumors, with deep and durable responses in some patients.
 
Pierre Dodion, chief medical officer at Innate Pharma, said, “The combination of lirilumab with nivolumab showed encouraging early efficacy signals in the initial part of the trial which support the strategy of simultaneously targeting the KIR and PD-1 pathways with lirilumab and nivolumab, respectively; the reported data point to broader potential for lirilumab. We look forward to further investigation of the combination in the Phase II part of this trial.”
 
BMS is currently investigating lirilumab in six trials, across a range of solid and hematological cancer indications, in monotherapy and in combination with other agents, and Innate Pharma is responsible for conducting the EffiKIR trial, a randomized Phase II trial evaluating lirilumab as a single agent in acute myeloid leukemia.