Exclusive: Carl June’s Tmunity encounters a lethal roadblock as 2 patient deaths derail lead trial, raise red flag forcing a rethink of CAR-T for solid tumors
The multifaceted campaign to create a CAR-T for solid tumors has run into a lethal problem.
In exclusive interviews, Tmunity founders Carl June and Oz Azam tell me that they have had to scrap their lead program for prostate cancer following the deaths of 2 patients earlier in the year — the last a little more than a month ago — after they experienced lethal bouts of neurotoxicity. What started as a voluntary halt by Tmunity in the face of these deaths flipped to an FDA-enforced red light for the clinical trial, while the biotech scrambled to rework its CAR-T design with a plan to get “version two” back into the clinic as soon as possible, with a new IND planned for the second half of the year.
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