No starring role for GSK’s Tim-3

GSK’s anti-Tim-3 antibody cobolimab, which has looked like a long shot for a while, is officially a flop. The company slipped out the failure of its pivotal Costar Lung study, in post-PD-(L)1 NSCLC, in its second-quarter earnings release on Wednesday. GSK said only that the trial hadn’t met its primary overall survival endpoint; Costar Lung compared cobolimab, Jemperli and docetaxel, or Jemperli plus docetaxel, versus docetaxel alone – so the result is also bad news for Jemperli. Cobolimab’s chances, meanwhile, had looked slim after various Tim-3 exits, most recently from AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb. While Kyowa Kirin recently entered the space with its ADC KK2845, others also seem to be cooling on this target. BeOne Medicines has yet to report data from two studies featuring its contender surzebiclimab that completed this year. Chia Tai recently terminated a Chinese phase 1/2 oesophageal cancer trial of TQB2618 for “business reasons”, while studies in solid tumours and head and neck cancer have “unknown status” on clinicaltrials.gov. And Biocity is apparently yet to begin recruiting patients into a trial of BC3402, despite that study first being posted in 2023 – although an investigator-sponsored study was more recently listed.

The clinical-stage Tim-3 pipeline

Source: OncologyPipeline & clinicaltrials.gov.