Alaunos Therapeutics, Inc. announced early clinical data from the first patient in its ongoing TCR-T Library Phase 1/2 trial. The data will be presented during a proffered talk at the CRI-ENCI-AACR Sixth International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference (CICON) being held in New York, NY from September 28 through October 1, 2022. The TCR-T Library Phase 1/2 trial is an open label, dose escalation study being conducted at MD Anderson.

The trial is enrolling patients with non-small cell lung, colorectal, endometrial, pancreatic, ovarian, and bile duct cancers that have a matching human leukocyte antigen (HLA) and hotspot mutation pairing in Alaunos' TCR-T library. Key highlights to be presented: First patient dosed was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer and had previously progressed on three prior lines of treatment. The patient was germline for HLA-A*11:01 with a KRAS G12D mutation, matching one of the ten TCRs within Alaunos' TCR library.

The patient received standard cy/flu lymphodepletion1 prior to an infusion of 9x109 TCR-T cells, which were produced using Sleepy Beauty at the Company's in-house cGMP manufacturing facility. The patient was confirmed to have achieved a partial response with a regression of 46.3% in target lesions at six weeks, which subsequently deepened to 51.2% at week 12. T-cell persistence was ongoing as of week 12.

The TCR-T cell therapy was well-tolerated and a manageable safety profile was observed in the first patient. The patient experienced grade 2 cytokine release syndrome (CRS) which resolved with nasal cannula oxygen supplementation and did not require anti-IL-6 treatment. Grade 4 thrombocytopenia and grade 3 anemia occurred and were both attributed to the lymphodepletion regimen.