Anocca has Dosed First Patients with Precision TCR-T Cell Therapy Targeting Mutant KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer
Anocca AB (‘Anocca’ or the ‘Company’), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing advanced T-cell immunotherapies, today announced the successful dosing of the first patients across multiple clinical sites with ANOC-001, a novel T cell receptor-modified T cell therapy (TCR-T)[1] targeting KRAS G12V mutations in an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer.
ANOC-001 is the first product to enter Anocca’s VIDAR-1 clinical programme, which focuses on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The therapy is designed for patients whose tumours carry a specific mutation in the KRAS gene. The product candidate has been discovered, developed and manufactured by Anocca at its in-house facilities in Sweden. ANOC-001 is the first non-viral gene-edited T cell therapy to be evaluated in Europe, with the deployment of this technology enabling scalable product development and future commercialisation.
Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest cancer types, with a five-year survival rate below 10% (1). Despite recent advances there are currently no definitive treatments for patients with progressed disease (2). KRAS mutations are one of the most common cancer mutations and are implicated in pancreatic, lung and colorectal cancers. G12V and G12D mutations in KRAS affect around 90% of pancreatic cancer patients. VIDAR-1 addresses this unmet need by engineering the immune system’s T-cells to recognise and attack cancer cells carrying the KRAS mutation.
