SELLAS Life Sciences Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SLS) announced that its Board of Directors is conducting a review of strategic options focusing on maximizing shareholder value. The Company has engaged Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. to act as its strategic and financial advisor for this process.
“We are committed to identifying a strategic plan which will enhance shareholder value while allowing for the acceleration of our development programs, so that our novel immunotherapeutics, GPS and NPS, may benefit cancer patients,” commented Angelos M. Stergiou, M.D., ScD h.c., President and Chief Executive Officer of SELLAS.
The Company plans to explore a wide range of strategic alternatives that include, among others, a sale of the Company, business combination, merger or reverse merger with another company, strategic investment/financing, or a funded collaboration or partnership which would allow the Company to continue with its current business plan of advancing the clinical development of its lead product candidates, GPS and NPS.
SELLAS recently initiated a Phase 1/2 prospective multi-arm (‘basket’ type), open-label, multi-institutional, U.S.-only clinical study of GPS in combination with Merck & Co., Inc.’s anti-PD-1 therapy, pembrolizumab (Keytruda®). The ongoing study is investigating GPS’s effects on the rate of morphological partial to complete response conversion in patients with AML on hypomethylating agents and on the overall response rate in adult patients with ovarian cancer, TNBC, small cell lung cancer, and colorectal cancer with measurable metastatic disease. The study is being led by Drs. Richard Maziarz of Oregon Health and Science University and Roisin O’Cearbhaill of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The Company also has planned a Phase 3 prospective open-label, randomized, controlled, global, registration-enabling clinical study of GPS monotherapy versus predefined investigator’s choice best available maintenance therapy in adult patients with AML who have achieved their morphological second complete response (with or without complete platelet count recovery; CR2/CR2p) following successful second-line antileukemic therapy. This study is being led by Drs. Hagop Kantarjian of MD Anderson Cancer Center and Gert Ossenkoppele of Amsterdam University Medical Center (VUMC) and the HOVON network.
The Company’s second clinical candidate, NPS, is being developed for TNBC. The Company is currently engaged in discussions with the FDA regarding trial design for a Phase 3 registrational study in TNBC.
The Company has not set a timeline for this process and there can be no assurance that a transaction will be entered into or consummated or, if a transaction is undertaken, as to its terms, structure or timing. The Company does not expect to discuss or disclose further developments regarding the strategic process unless and until its Board of Directors has approved a specific action or otherwise determined that further disclosure is appropriate or required by law.
Keytruda® is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, N.J., USA, and is not a trademark of SELLAS. The manufacturer of this brand is not affiliated with and does not endorse SELLAS or its products.
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