James Li, JW Therapeutics CEO

Sis­ter to Juno's liso-cel, JW's rel­ma-cel lands sec­ond-ever CAR-T ap­proval in Chi­na

Juno may have stum­bled its way to a dis­tant third fin­ish in the CD19 CAR-T race, but its joint ven­ture in Chi­na is head­ing off to a thriv­ing start.

JW Ther­a­peu­tics, which took its name from co-founders Juno and WuXi AppTec, has scored the sec­ond-ever CAR-T ap­proval by Chi­na’s Na­tion­al Med­ical Prod­uct Ad­min­is­tra­tion just weeks af­ter Fo­s­un Kite, an­oth­er joint ven­ture, claimed first.

Now sanc­tioned to treat re­lapsed or re­frac­to­ry large B-cell lym­phoma pa­tients who’ve had two or more lines of sys­temic ther­a­py, rel­ma-cel was de­vel­oped on the same cell process plat­form that spawned Juno’s liso-cel — now Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s Breyanzi — but a dif­fer­ent drug in that it’s tai­lored for Chi­nese needs.

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