Thank you Thorsten Ross for the great representation of CatalYm at the recent Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)'s Scientific Research Conference!
Looking back at my talk at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)’s Scientific Research Conference on the TGF-beta Superfamily last Monday, I truly enjoyed the fruitful discussions and exchanges it sparked with other experts in the field. It was a pleasure to meet our collaborators and to be joined by my esteemed colleague and fellow GDF-15 enthusiast, María Cecilia González. Our results highlight the importance of GDF-15 as a central mediator of #cancer treatment resistance to platinum-based #chemotherapy. We showed that GDF-15 blockade induced anti-tumor-responses in preclinical tumor models resistant to chemoimmunotherapy treatment, rendering them sensitive again, resulting in tumor growth inhibition and prolonged animal survival. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that GDF-15 neutralization was associated with enhanced activation and proliferation of circulating CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and increased proportions of antigen-presenting dendritic cells in the tumor microenvironment. In addition, we confirmed that GDF-15 expression in tumor cells is induced by chemotherapies like cisplatin, carboplatin and pemetrexed, and that platinum further induces rapid systemic release of GDF-15 from non-malignant cells in vivo limiting tolerability of this treatment regimen. Collectively, our findings further underline the clinical potential of our GDF-15-neutralizing strategy with our lead antibody candidate, visugromab, to counteract the establishment of primary and secondary resistance. Since the combination of platinum-based chemotherapy and PD-(L)1 inhibitors is a central part of the first-line treatment of advanced #NSCLC, our approach may improve the effectiveness and tolerability of standard-of-care treatment in this indication, where a significant proportion of patients still do not respond or experience relapse. If you are curious to learn more about our lead program, which is currently evaluated in a Phase 2 #ClinicalTrial, please visit www.catalym.com. #TGFSRC