Gilead has abandoned work on the lead drug from its $405 million buyout of MiroBio in the latest blow to the BTLA agonist field.
The U.S. pharma acquired the U.K.-based immune checkpoint agonist biotech back in 2022. A central plank of the deal was MiroBio’s lead asset MB272, a selective agonist of immune inhibitory receptor B- and T-lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA) that had by that point recently entered a phase 1 trial.
At the time, Gilead described MiroBio’s I-ReSToRE platform as having “potential to produce best-in-class agonist antibodies targeting immune inhibitory receptors.”
The pharma rechristened the BTLA agonist GS-0272 and launched its own phase 1 study in September 2023. The aim of that trial was to assess the safety and tolerability of multiple ascending doses of GS-0272 as well as characterize its pharmacokinetics.
But Gilead told Fierce yesterday that the company has now made the call to “not pursue further development of GS-0272.”
“This decision was based on a review of available data and reflects our ongoing evaluation of our pipeline to ensure we are focused on programs with the greatest potential to benefit patients,” a spokesperson told Fierce.
The spokesperson didn’t specifically address Fierce’s question about what impact terminating GS-0272 has on the legacy of the MiroBio deal. Gilead’s clinical-stage pipeline still lists another asset from the deal in development in the form of GS-0151, a PD-1 agonist formerly known as MB-151 that began a phase 1 study for rheumatoid arthritis last year.
Targeting BTLA was meant to offer drugmakers a chance to down-modulate immune cell activity with the potential to treat a range of inflammatory diseases.
But Gilead is not the only company to have struggled with this modality in the clinic. Eli Lilly’s own BTLA attenuator venanprubart failed to reduce rash or arthritis in a phase 2 study of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, while AnaptysBio scrapped its candidate in 2024 after a phase 2 eczema fail.
Back in 2022, MiroBio execs told Fierce that the two rival programs from Lilly and Anaptys were evidence of the “true clinical potential” for BTLA agonists.
