Kaleido Biosciences to Collaborate with Gustave Roussy Cancer Center

Kaleido Biosciences, Inc. recently announced plans to develop Microbiome Metabolic Therapies (MMT) to enhance the effects of cancer immunotherapies under a new research collaboration with Gustave Roussy, the largest cancer treatment center in Europe. Gustave Roussy is a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy and research into the relationship between the microbiome and cancer.

Kaleido’s MMTs are designed to modulate the metabolic output and profile of the microbiome by driving the function and distribution of the organ’s existing microbes. Working closely with world-leading scientists at Gustave Roussy – Professors Laurence Zitvogel, MD, PhD, and Guido Kroemer, MD, PhD – Kaleido aims to identify and characterize MMT candidates with the potential to improve cancer immunotherapy efficacy by increasing the number of patients who respond to inhibitors of immune checkpoints such as CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1.  While checkpoint inhibitors have been effective in treating certain cancers, studies have shown that overall, the majority of cancer patients do not respond to checkpoint therapy.

Professor Zitvogel, Scientific Director of the Gustave Roussy immunotherapy program and Director of the INSERM Tumour Immunology and Immunotherapy Laboratory, said “In our work at Gustave Roussy, we will soon be able to predict with a high degree of accuracy which patients with certain cancers may respond to immunotherapies, such as checkpoint inhibitors, based on specific features of their intestinal microbiota. We are excited by Kaleido’s unique approach to the microbiome and believe it has the potential to provide cancer patients with new options to optimize and personalize treatment.”

“Researchers at Gustave Roussy have been at the forefront of global efforts to understand the links between cancer, immunity, and the gut microbiome. We are exceptionally pleased to be collaborating with Professors Zitvogel and Kroemer on the development of MMTs aimed at improving patients’ response to treatment,” said Johan van Hylckama Vlieg, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Kaleido. “This is also an exciting milestone for Kaleido as it marks our entry into immuno-oncology, an area with significant opportunity to help advance the treatment and care of patients with cancer.”

The collaboration is aimed at improving outcomes in patients who don’t respond to checkpoint inhibitor treatment by changing their microbiome composition and metabolic output. Kaleido will employ its proprietary screening platform to analyze intestinal microbiome samples from checkpoint inhibitor non-responder patients and identify MMTs that induce changes in the microbial communities associated with favorable response to treatment. Gustave Roussy researchers will then use their advanced preclinical models to identify those compounds that stimulate the targeted therapeutic responses. Initial data obtained with these models (Routy et al, Science, 2018) indicate translational potential and suggest that they may serve as a critical step prior to clinical testing as well as serve as powerful tools for delineating underlying mechanisms of action.

Based in Paris, France, Gustave Roussy is the leading center in immunotherapy in Europe. In 2015, Gustave Roussy launched an institutional program dedicated to immunotherapy: the GRIP (Gustave Roussy Immunotherapy Program). This program aims to strengthen Translational Research on these new treatments, and accelerate the clinical development of immunotherapy, in order to facilitate access to these treatments to a larger number of patients. Between 2013 and 2018, nearly 250 immunotherapy-based clinical trials were implemented at the Institute and more than 3,300 patients have been treated with immunotherapy. Gustave Roussy is also a leading coordinator of the RHU LUMIERE, a French multi-institutional microbiome network in lung cancers supported by the Health Ministry as well as of the Oncobiome consortium, a five-year project with 16 international partners supported by the European Commission.

Kaleido’s Microbiome Metabolic Therapies, or MMTs, are designed to drive the function and distribution of the microbiome organ’s existing microbes in order to decrease or increase the production of metabolites, or to advantage or disadvantage certain bacteria in the microbiome community. The company’s initial MMT candidates are targeted glycans that are orally administered, have limited systemic exposure, and are selectively metabolized by enzymes in the microbiome.  Kaleido utilizes its human-centric discovery and development platform to study MMTs in microbiome samples in an ex vivo setting, followed by advancing MMT candidates rapidly into clinical studies in healthy subjects and patients. These human clinical studies are conducted under regulations supporting research with food, evaluating safety, tolerability and potential markers of effect.  For MMT candidates that are further developed as therapeutics, the Company conducts clinical trials under an Investigational New Drug (IND) or regulatory equivalent outside the US, and in Phase 2 or later development.

Kaleido Biosciences is a clinical-stage healthcare company with a differentiated, chemistry-driven approach to leveraging the microbiome organ to treat disease and improve human health. The Company has built a human-centric proprietary product platform to enable the rapid and cost-efficient discovery and development of novel Microbiome Metabolic Therapies (MMT™). MMTs are designed to modulate the metabolic output and profile of the microbiome by driving the function and distribution of the organ’s existing microbes. Kaleido is advancing a broad pipeline of MMT candidates with the potential to address a variety of diseases and conditions with significant unmet patient needs. To learn more, visit https://kaleido.com/.