Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRIS), stock kicked off in pre-market session with a huge jump as it was trading 141.3% to $3.55 after a biotechnology company focused on the development of groundbreaking therapeutics for the cancer therapy, today revealed promising initial findings from its ongoing open-label, single-arm Phase 1 dose-escalation trial in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes of CA-4948, a novel small molecule IRAK4 kinase inhibitor (MDS).

IRAK4 plays an important role in the signaling pathways of the toll-like receptor (TLR) and interleukin-1 receptor (IL-1R) receptors, and these processes are often dysregulated in AML and MDS patients. The long-form of IRAK4 (IRAK4-L) has recently been explored by private entities to be oncogenic and preferentially expressed in more than half of AML and MDS patients. A variety of drivers, including unique spliceosome mutations, are thought to cause this.