One of the current challenges of immunotherapy is the hunt for good targets, and the Claudins – a family of roughly two dozen transmembrane proteins – would appear to have a lot going for them. “Some Claudins distribute in a tissue-specific manner, and malignant transformation causes their exposition,” Cinta Hierro told the audience at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2024 Congress. “Others are rarely expressed in healthy tissue.”
Autolus Therapeutics Inc. has picked up plenty of financial momentum, about $600 million worth, in its runup to a November 2024 PDUFA date for its CD19 CAR T therapy. Helping propel that momentum is Biontech SE, another CAR T therapy developer. For $50 million cash, Biontech bought the rights to use Autolus’ manufacturing and commercial infrastructure in the U.K. so it can advance its CAR T-cell BNT-211 program in the clinic.
ESMO late breakers were released Sept. 8, and scientifically at least, a key theme of the meeting will be that cell therapies, at long last, are capable of besting solid tumors.
Solid tumors have been a tougher nut to crack for CAR T cells than B-cell cancers, for two main reasons. Solid tumors have an inhibitors microenvironment that has made it difficult to get durable responses. And identifying antigens as specific as the B-cell markers CD19 and CD22 has been challenging, leading to problems with on-target, off-tumor toxicity.
“We’re still a far cry from reproducible, durable benefits” with CAR T cells targeting solid tumors, Crystal Mackall told the audience at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). But “we’re beginning to see some signals.” Mackall is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy.
