Intratumoral Microdosing of Motolimod in HNSCC

CIVO is a research tool composed of a hand-held single-use sterile injector coupled with fluorescent tracking microspheres called CIVO GLO that mark the sites of drug microdose injection, enabling rapid assessment of multiple oncology drugs or drug combinations simultaneously within a patient's tumor. In this Phase 0 intratumoral microdosing study in human patients with pathologic diagnosis of HNSCC with at least one lesion (primary, recurrent, or effaced metastatic lymph nodes) for which there is a planned surgical intervention, we will evaluate motolimod's ability to activate immune effector cells within the local tumor microenvironment. Additionally, this study will examine motolimod in combination with nivolumab to study whether motolimod enhances the localized immune responses compared to those of either immunotherapy alone. Motolimod singly and in combination with nivolumab will be delivered intratumorally in subtherapeutic microdose quantities via CIVO. The CIVO device penetrates solid tumors and delivers subtherapeutic microdoses of up to eight anti-cancer agents or combinations of anti-cancer agents co-injected with CIVO GLO into discrete regions of the tumor. At the time of the planned surgical intervention (at least four hours to up to four days after the CIVO microdose injection), the injected tumor tissue is then excised and tumor responses are assessed via histological staining of tumor cross-sections sampled perpendicular to each injection column. Co-injection with CIVO GLO enables identification of each injection site during resection as well as in tissues stained for analysis. Because the platform delivers microdose amounts of each test agent or combination directly into the patient's tumor tissue, hypotheses can be tested earlier in the drug development process, consistent with the goals of the 2006 FDA Exploratory IND Guidance for Industry.