A collaboration between Arovella Therapeutics (ASX:ALA) and Imugen (ASX:IMU) has shown promise to kill solid tumour cells representing 9 out of 10 diagnosed cancer cases.
Encouraging initial in vitro experiments have shown the combination of Arovella’s CAR19-iNKT cell therapy (ALA-101) and Imugene’s onCARlytics therapy (CF33-CD19) kills solid tumour cells in vitro.
With solid tumours being such a staggeringly overrepresented part of diagnosed cancer cases, it is little surprise the tumour eradication market is valued at US$210 billion worldwide.
Arovella’s CEO and Managing Director said the collaboration with Imugene opens potential new therapeutic targets for ALA-101 in solid tumours and is an exciting expansion of Arovella’s pipeline.
We are pleased by the first set of data and delighted to continue the partnership with Imugene and its onCARlytics platform,” Dr Baker said.
Combining the two platforms made sense scientifically and seeing this play out in practise is exciting, given the impact this combination of therapeutics could have in solid tumours.”
Next Steps
Arovella plans to progress its ALA-101 product towards first in human clinical trials for the treatment of blood cancers and is working on completing clinical manufacturing and IND-enabling studies.
About the Collaboration
Imugene’s onCARlytics platform induces solid tumour cells to express CD19 on their surface, allowing them to be targeted by therapies, such as ALA-101, that target cancer cells through CD19. Solid tumours represent 90% of diagnosed cancer cases; as of 2021, the substantial tumour market was valued at US$210 billion as part of their research collaboration. Both companies are pleased to announce that they are progressing the research collaboration to the next testing phase. Companies intend to present this early data at a conference in the near term. The project’s next stage is to test the combination in vivo (mouse models).