Sellas Life Sciences to present preclinical SLS009 data at AACR conference

Sellas Life Sciences (SLS) announced that preclinical data on SLS009, a potent, selective CDK9 inhibitor, will be presented in a poster session at the American Association for Cancer Research, or AACR, taking place April 17-22 at San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. The abstracts will be published in the online Proceedings of the AACR. Exposure of acute myeloid leukemia cell lines to increasing concentrations of SLS009 for six hours resulted in increased active caspase-3 levels and decreased MCL-1 expression. When cells were treated repeatedly for eight hours up to three doses, the IC50 decreased from 50 nM to about 20 nM, demonstrating enhanced potency with repeated exposure. Changes in caspase-3 and MCL-1 were observed as early as six hours after completion of treatment and became more pronounced at 24 hours. Lower levels of MCL-1 and survivin were strongly correlated with increased apoptosis. Notably, SLS009 demonstrated activity even in AML models harboring ASXL1 and TP53 mutations, which are typically associated with high resistance and poor clinical outcomes.