Medigene cuts TCR-T therapy in pivot to focus on solid tumors
It’s been several months since Medigene AG laid out plans to devote itself to solid tumors. In keeping with that promise, the German biotech said Thursday that it’s cutting an early-stage TCR-T therapy for relapsed or refractory blood cancer patients — after researchers blamed the pandemic in part for their failure to dose any patients in the first seven months of a Phase I trial.
The candidate, MDG1021, was licensed from the Leiden University Medical Center at the end of 2018, about a year after Medigene out-licensed its AAV-like particle tech to focus on T cells and immunotherapy. It targets a specific, immunogenic form of the antigen HA-1, which is expressed on cells of the hematopoietic system. The idea is that if the patient’s blood cells, — and thus lymphoma or leukemic cells — carry the immunogenic version of the HA-1 antigen and the donor stem cells do not, MDG1021 TCR-T cells would fight the patient’s cancer cells while allowing the donor cells to repopulate the patient’s blood forming system.
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