Stock Alert: Surface Oncology Shares Up 36% In Premarket

(RTTNews) - Shares of Surface Oncology (SURF) are up over 36% in pre-market today, after the company announced that it has entered into a clinical trial collaboration with Merck (MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, through a subsidiary, to evaluate the safety and efficacy of combining Surface's SRF617, an investigational antibody therapy targeting CD39, with Merck's KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), the first anti-PD-1 therapy approved in the United States.

This combination would be studied as a component of the first-in-human Phase 1/1b study of SRF617 and would be evaluated in patients with solid tumors, with a focus on patients with gastric cancer and those who have developed resistance to checkpoint inhibition - both areas of high unmet need.

Robert Ross, chief medical officer at Surface Oncology, said, "We have demonstrated in preclinical studies that the inhibition of CD39 results in substantial activation of both the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system. Encouragingly, we also found that activation is heightened in combination with anti-PD-1 treatment and that this combinatory approach has the potential to overcome anti-PD-1 resistance."

The stock has been trading in the range of $1.15 - $4.21 for the past one year, and closed Tuesday's trade at $2.66, down 1 cent or 0.37%. SURF is currently trading at $3.63, up 97 cents or 36.47% in the pre-market session.