Amid a record bad year, Bel­licum keeps tak­ing its lumps as FDA slams tri­al hold on CAR-T hope­ful

It’s been no less than a dis­as­trous year for Hous­ton biotech Bel­licum Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals af­ter tak­ing a scalpel to its pipeline and dump­ing a vast ma­jor­i­ty of its staff. Now, in an al­ready-doomed tri­al of one of Bel­licum’s next-gen on­col­o­gy hope­fuls, the FDA is dol­ing out even more lumps.

Bel­licum di­vulged on Mon­day that the FDA had placed a clin­i­cal hold on its Phase I/II tri­al for CAR-T can­di­date BPX-601 af­ter a pan­cre­at­ic can­cer pa­tient’s death in the ear­ly-stage test.

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