Bel­licum halts tri­als af­ter se­ri­ous ad­verse event, looks for 's­trate­gic al­ter­na­tives'

Bel­licum Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is halt­ing the Phase I/II tri­als for the on­ly two can­di­dates in its pipeline af­ter re­port­ing a se­ri­ous ad­verse event — and is now eval­u­at­ing “strate­gic al­ter­na­tives” for the com­pa­ny af­ter a rocky few years.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day that the on­go­ing tri­als for its two Go­CAR-T cell can­di­dates in com­bi­na­tion with rim­iducid in pre-treat­ed can­cer pa­tients, BPX-601 and BPX-603, are com­ing to a halt. This comes af­ter a pa­tient on BPX-601 ex­pe­ri­enced se­ri­ous side ef­fects, in­clud­ing grade 4 cy­tokine re­lease syn­drome. This was the sec­ond dose-lim­it­ing tox­i­c­i­ty in the dose-es­ca­la­tion co­hort.

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