ESMO 2023 – more hope for a new Car-T target

Early colorectal cancer data presented at ESMO today on Beijing Immunochina’s IM96, a Car-T therapy targeting the GI-expressed antigen GUCY2C, lend cautious further support for this approach, which was given its first boost by Parasol Biotech’s rival Car project at ASCO. However, whether IM96 is competitive against Parasol’s work is the big question. IM96 generated just one remission in nine fourth-line or later patients, but the intriguing fact about the responder is that he had a KRAS-mutated tumour, and remains in remission at nine months. It’s also noteworthy that among all nine subjects the extent of tumour regression corresponded with GUCY2C expression, infusion dose and extent of Car-T cell expansion. Meanwhile Parasol, a private Chinese biotech, came to ASCO boasting of six remissions among 10 evaluable colorectal cancer subjects – a seemingly impressive result for a cell therapy in a solid tumour setting – though two additional non-evaluable patients died, one of bone marrow failure and the other of Covid. Legend has a preclinical Car-T against the same target, while Pfizer is in phase 1 with a T-cell engaging MAb.

Selected projects targeting GUCY2C

Source: OncologyPipeline.