Developing Personalized Immunotherapies for Solid Tumors

“The benefit of what we're doing is that we created this [cell therapy manufacturing] process with things that are available, we didn't have to create new technologies, new spaces, or new equipment in order to be able to manufacture the product for our patients. And that makes it scalable.”

Genocea is focused on finding the right targets to create personalized immunotherapies for patients with solid tumors. The company does so by using their ATLAS platform, which analyzes patient samples to identify the best antigens to target in patient tumors. GEN-009, a neoantigen vaccine, and GEN-011, a neoantigen-specific peripheral T-cell therapy, are the company’s 2 lead programs.

GEN-009 has demonstrated long term, broad immune responses against neoantigens, according to data from a phase 1/2 trial (NCT03633110) presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2021 meeting in June. Meanwhile, the phase 1/2 TiTAN trial (NCT04596033) investigating GEN-011 dosed its first patient in July 2021.

GeneTherapyLive spoke with Jessica Baker Flechtner, PhD, chief scientific officer, Genocea, to learn more about the company’s focus on solid tumors and the challenges in that space. She also discussed the challenge of manufacturing their cell therapies as well as upcoming data on GEN-009.

REFERENCE

Genocea provides second quarter 2021 corporate update. News release. Genocea. July 29, 2021. https://ir.genocea.com/news-releases/news-release-details/genocea-provides-second-quarter-2021-corporate-update