Boehringer Ingelheim, based in Ridgefield, has launched three late-stage clinical trials targeting aggressive cancers where patients currently have few effective treatment options.

Two of the trials are testing obrixtamig, a drug which is designed to work by directing the body's own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. The approach relies on identifying patients whose tumors carry a specific protein called delta-like canonical Notch ligand 3 (DLL3), which appears on cancer cells but is largely absent from healthy ones. That distinction makes DLL3 a potential marker for identifying which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment. One trial, DAREON-Lung-1, focuses on small cell lung cancer (SCLC), the most aggressive type of lung cancer, where patients often see short-lived benefit from current treatments. The other, DAREON-NEC-1, targets extrapulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma (epNEC), a cancer for which survival outcomes have not improved in decades.

Lykke Hinsch Gylvin, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Boehringer Ingelheim, said, "People living with aggressive cancers often face a shortage of treatment choices. With the launch of these trials, we are advancing our precision oncology ambitions to move targeted therapies into earlier treatment lines and bring biomarker-informed science into late-stage development. By focusing on the biology of each tumor, we aim to give patients facing cancer more precise treatment options with the goal of improving outcomes where the need is greatest."

The third trial, Beamion LUNG-3, tests whether HERNEXEOS (zongertinib tablets), already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for patients with advanced HER2 (ERBB2)-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), can also help patients at an earlier stage, specifically those who have completed surgery and face a significant risk of recurrence.

Boehringer Ingelheim's broader oncology effort centers on matching treatments to a patient's specific tumor biology rather than applying uniform approaches across all cancer cases, with the goal of expanding options for people facing cancers where medical need remains high.