Look­ing to solve the sol­id tu­mor puz­zle box, Caris­ma aims to take 'CAR-M' ground­break­er in­to ear­ly-stage tri­al

In an ef­fort to crack the code of hard-to-treat sol­id tu­mors, bio­phar­ma has tried nu­mer­ous path­ways to ef­fec­tive­ly tar­get those mass­es with­out dam­ag­ing healthy tis­sues. Philly’s Caris­ma Ther­a­peu­tics thinks it has a win­ner with its macrophage cell-based “CAR-M” can­di­dates, and now it’s tak­ing a new flush of in­vestor cash to try one in the clin­ic.

Caris­ma has scored a $47 mil­lion Se­ries B round to take its lead can­di­date, an­ti-HER2 CAR-M tu­mor fight­er CT-0508, in­to a Phase I tri­al as well as ad­vanc­ing the rest of its pre­clin­i­cal macrophage pipeline. Caris­ma has keyed in on the use of tar­get­ed macrophage cells and vec­tors to pen­e­trate the en­vi­ron­ment of sol­id can­cer tu­mors with­out hurt­ing health tis­sues — a puz­zle in the sol­id tu­mor field.

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