Verismo Therapeutics, the U.S. subsidiary of HLB Innovation, said it will unveil a CAR-T cell technology to treat solid tumors at the American Association for Cancer Research on the 20th (local time). The approach uses T cells, immune cells in the patient's body, to treat cancer and is drawing attention as a next-generation anticancer technology.
T cells circulate throughout the body and attack when they detect cancer cells. But cancer cells run interference to keep T cells from finding them, so even if T cells are present in the body, they may fail to properly recognize cancer cells. CAR-T therapy removes T cells from the patient, engineers them to recognize cancer cells, and then reinfuses them. This allows T cells to travel through the bloodstream, properly locate cancer cells, and eliminate them.
However, CAR-T cells have been used for blood cancers such as leukemia, and have struggled to treat rigid solid tumors. That is because CAR-T cells may fail to penetrate tumor-form cancers, or become exhausted before they even reach the vicinity of the solid tumor.
Verismo Therapeutics is conducting a phase 1 clinical trial of the CAR-T therapy "SynKIR-110" for solid tumors to overcome these limitations. The company is escalating doses in patients with ovarian cancer and cholangiocarcinoma, among others, and in the process tumor size was reduced by up to 47%. The company said safety and antitumor activity were confirmed.
Interim results from phase 1 will be presented at the conference by Janos Tanyi, a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A company official said, "We have secured early data supporting therapeutic potential."