Imugene goes for a cytokine boost

Having bought azer-cel from Precision Biosciences, Australia’s Imugene has now generated its first human data with this allogeneic anti-CD19 Car-T therapy. The case reports come from the dose-expansion phase of a phase 1 trial initiated by Precision, with Imugene focusing on diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients who had failed autologous Car-T therapy, following the promising signs Precision generated in this setting. Most notable is that Imugene aims to focus on patients given IL-2 in addition to standard lymphodepletion, after seeing complete remissions, ongoing for over four months, in two of three evaluable patients; the IL-2-containing regimen is what Imugene says it plans to use in its US registrational phase 2/3 study. Critics might say it’s unclear whether any benefit is down to azer-cel or to IL-2, but Imugene stock climbed 10% today. The data broadly mirror – in many fewer patients – what Precision reported in dose escalation; that came after Precision sidelined azer-cel in favour of the next-generation PBCAR19B, before signing the Imugene deal and scrapping Car-T work. Focusing on Car-relapsed patients could make sense given the squeeze from anti-CD20 bispecifics and early-line autologous Car-T, but long-term durability in many more patients remains key to azer-cel’s prospects.

How Precision/Imugene’s azer-cel data in r/r DLBCL have evolved

Source: OncologyPipeline.