Century turns away from natural killer cells

Century Therapeutics has joined an industry shift away from oncology, discontinuing Elipse-1, a phase 1 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma trial of its lead project, CNTY-101. The allogeneic iPSC-derived CD19-directed NK cell therapy is now being developed exclusively in autoimmune disease. In Elipse-1 Century previously reported an ORR of 83% and a complete response rate of 33% among patients receiving 1 billion cells, and disclosed plans to increase dosing to 3 billion cells; but in its fourth-quarter results release on Wednesday is said this trial didn’t meet its benchmark for differentiation. Other NK players like Caribou and Nkarta have foundered, an issue being the fact that these cells don’t appear to expand like T cells. Century’s oncology focus will now be on iPSC-derived Car-T, led by another CD19-targeted project, CNTY-308. However, these efforts are still very early. The lead proponent of iPSC-derived projects is Fate Therapeutics, which still has both Car-NK and Car-T efforts in play, despite discontinuing various NK cell programmes in 2023 after losing Johnson & Johnson as a partner. Still, Fate largely focused on autoimmune disease during its most recent update. Other groups to move away from oncology and towards autoimmune recently include Sana, Adicet and Shattuck.

Century Therapeutics’ oncology pipeline

Source: OncologyPipeline & company presentation.