Agenus Inc. announced a clinical trial collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The double-blind, randomized controlled Phase 2 trial will evaluate the effect of Agenus' personalized autologous vaccine candidate, Prophage (HSPPC-96), in conjunction with Merck's pembrolizumab on the overall survival rate of patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma (ndGBM). The trial will be conducted by the Brain Tumor Trials Collaborative (BTTC), a consortium of top academic centers led by Dr. Mark Gilbert, Chief of the Neuro-Oncology Branch at the NCI Center for Cancer Research. The trial aims to assess the efficacy of PD-1 targeted checkpoint blockade in combination with a heat-shock protein based vaccine candidate in an indication in which this vaccine has shown improved progression-free survival, as presented at ASCO 2015. It is a two-arm trial with one arm receiving pembrolizumab as a monotherapy and a second arm receiving both Prophage and pembrolizumab in combination. Forty-five patients will be randomly assigned to each arm. Under this collaboration, Agenus will supply Prophage, Merck will provide pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and NCI and BTTC member sites will recruit patients and conduct the trial.