The University of Pennsylvania is now enrolling patients in the new phase 1/2 multi-center clinical trial for CAR T cell therapy. The trial includes patients with intestinal neuroendocrine tumors, as well as advanced colorectal cancer and gastric cancer. The trial is the culmination of ten years of laboratory research by Dr. Xianxin Hua, funded by NETRF.
Dr. Hua’s lab discovered the CDH17 CAR T cell therapy. This first clinical trial will investigate the safety and efficacy of the therapy and has the potential to revolutionize the treatment for NETs. Despite CDH17’s presence in healthy intestine cells, the CAR T cells engineered to target CDH17 were able to distinguish cancer cells from normal cells effectively, eliminating the NETs without damaging the essential cells in the body.
Jennifer Eads, MD is the study’s principal investigator at University of Pennsylvania and is also a member of NETRF’s Board of Scientific Advisors. “After over a decade of development here at Penn, it is thrilling to be advancing CHM CDH17 as a potential new medicine for cancer patients” said Dr. Eads.
Chimeric Therapeutics, an Australian leader in cell therapy, built upon the preclinical work from Dr. Hua’s lab and developed the CDH17 CAR T cell therapy, CHM 2101.
You can read more about NETRF’s role in this research milestone here.