United Immunity, Co., Ltd., a clinical stage biotech company advancing next-generation immunotherapies through its proprietary Myeloid Targeting Platform™, today announced that it has entered into a Master Clinical Supply Agreement with Roche for the supply of atezolizumab (Tecentriq®), a humanised anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody checkpoint inhibitor. The agreement will support future clinical studies evaluating UI-102, a TLR7/8 agonist encapsulated in a pullulan nanoparticle, in combination with atezolizumab.

This collaboration will enable the expansion of United Immunity’s ongoing Phase 1/2 first-in-human clinical trial (NCT07605962), which is designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and preliminary efficacy of UI-102 as both a monotherapy and in combination with atezolizumab in patients with advanced solid tumours.

Most solid tumours fail to respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors because they possess an immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment that limits anti-tumour immune activity. UI-102 is designed to reprogram immunosuppressive M2-like tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) into pro-inflammatory M1-like TAMs, with the goal of converting immunologically “cold” tumours that are resistant to checkpoint inhibition into “hot,” immune-responsive tumours.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Roche to advance the development of UI-102 for patients with hard-to-treat cancers,” said Masato Kishida, Chief Executive Officer of United Immunity. “In preclinical studies, UI-102 demonstrated enhanced anti-tumour activity in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors compared with checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy in tumour models that were otherwise resistant to checkpoint blockade. We believe these findings support the potential of UI-102 to improve responses in patients whose tumours are not adequately treated with current immunotherapies.