Penn startup launches first human trial for solid tumor cancer treatment

A Penn-affiliated biotechnology startup has begun testing an experimental immunotherapy designed to treat solid tumors. 

The immunotherapy, DISP-10, was launched by Dispatch Bio — a company co-founded by immunotherapy professor Carl June and Chief Platform Officer Lex Johnson. The trial will evaluate the treatment’s safety and determine a recommended dose for further study.

The Philadelphia and San Francisco-based firm is starting by testing DISP-10 in patients who currently have advanced gastrointestinal cancers.

CAR T-cell therapy is “incredibly effective” against blood cancers because they are easily accessible in the bloodstream, Johnson explained in an interview. Solid tumors, however, form within organs such as the liver and colon and can be more difficult to target without damaging healthy tissue.

Dispatch seeks to address these challenges through a two-component platform. The first component, a tumor-targeting virus called DV-10, is designed to place a synthetic marker called Flare on cancer cells. The second component is a laboratory-engineered CAR T-cell therapy that recognizes the marker and attacks the tagged cells. 

“The key mechanism that we’ve identified here at Dispatch is this forward-feeding interaction between the two components,” Johnson said. 

According to him, when the T cell recognizes a tagged tumor cell, it leads to a chain reaction. 

That cell “tags the next cell, which is then able to be seen and killed, and on and on and on until the tumors are eliminated,” he said. 

Dispatch observed this process in pre-clinical tumor models, but the clinical trial will help determine whether the treatment is safe and effective for humans.

Johnson added that the virus is designed to create a more “permissive” environment for the T cells by mimicking a viral infection. Solid tumors can create a suppressive environment that limits immune-cell activity, while the viral response could allow the T cells to function “at a much higher level,” he said.

DISP-10 currently targets advanced gastrointestinal cancers and has a Fast Track designation from the United States Food and Drug Administration to expedite its drug development process. The designation is intended to accelerate the development and review of treatments for serious conditions with unmet medical needs. 

The first phase of the clinical trial will evaluate the treatment’s safety and tolerability and determine a recommended dose for further study. That dose will then be administered to a larger group of participants in a later stage. 

Johnson said he hopes the cell therapy will eventually produce “robust” and “long-lived” effects that extend patients’ life expectancies. 

“One of the really devastating things about these upper and lower GI cancers specifically is that after the first line of therapy, those patients that don’t respond have less than a year to live,” Johnson said. “Doing anything for these patients that can extend that window would be phenomenal.”

Johnson met June when completing his Ph.D. in Immunology at Penn in 2015. He went on to partner with researchers from San Francisco and Stanford University before establishing the company in 2022.

“We’re really excited for the patients to try to provide something that hopefully can change some of these people’s lives,” Johnson concluded.

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