Evaluation of a Pragmatic Approach to Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) Using an IL2 Analog (ANV419) vs High Dose IL2 After Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TIL) Therapy in Patients With Melanoma, NSCLC and Cervical Cancer (PragmaTIL)

Background: The presence of T-lymphocytes in resected tumor samples derived from long-term survival patients and the fact that reinvigoration of their functionality through the administration of specific immune-therapies can lead to remarkable antitumor responses supports that lymphocytes play a critical role in cancer immunity. TIL-based ACT (Adoptive cell therapy using tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes product) is a modality of ACT used to treat patients with multiple types of cancer and it consists in the adoptive transfer of ex vivo expanded autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes obtained from tumor resection or tumor biopsies in patients following a non-myeloablative lymphodepleting (NMA-LD) chemotherapy. Ex vivo expansion of TIL relies on the non-specific expansion of lymphocytes present in tumor single cell suspensions or tumor fragments in high dose IL-2. Although proven efficacy in selected, the HD-IL-2 use remains relatively restricted due to toxicity. Due to the short serum half-life and the need to achieve an immune-modulatory effect in the tissues, IL-2 must be given in doses that induce severe systemic toxicities, including capillary leak syndrome (CLS), pulmonary edema, hypotension, acute renal insufficiency, and rarely myocarditis, limiting its applicability in cancer. Studies comparing HD-IL-2 with lower doses both in renal cell carcinoma and metastatic melanoma to minimize toxicity demonstrated the superiority of the high dose regimens in both diseases. These drawbacks of HD-IL-2 use encouraged the development of improved IL-2-based biologic agents with higher selectivity for effector immune cell subsets, reduced toxicity, and prolonged half-life. ANV419 is a novel IL-2 agent, which has been developed as a preferentially IL-2Rβγ directed fusion protein with a longer half-life. It has shown high effector selectivity and a favorable safety profile in preclinical testing, including in nonhuman primates, and it has been investigated in an ongoing o