Francesca Barone, MD, PhD, on Viral Immunotherapy for Glioma, Prostate Cancer

“The important thing is that we are focusing, especially with CAN-3110, on extremely difficult to treat tumors where classical immunotherapy has failed. And I really think that the ability of viral immunotherapy to add the ability of profoundly modifyingthe tumor microenvironment in situ is going to be key for this tumor to be converted from having a cold immunosuppressive microenvironment to hot tumors.”

Patients with recurrent high-grade glioma (rHGG) treated with a single intratumoral injection of Candel Therapeutics’ CAN-3110 (also known as rQNestin34.5v.2) tolerated the treatment well and had promising signals of efficacy and survival benefits according to new data from a phase 1/2 study (NCT03152318).

The data were presented by Francesca Barone, MD, PhD, chief scientific officer, Candel Therapeutics, at the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) 2023 Annual Meeting, held May 16-20, in Los Angeles, California. CGTLive spoke with Barone to learn more about CAN-3110, also known as rQNestin34.5v.2, which is a Herpes simplex virus (HSV)-1 oncolytic viral immunotherapy.She discussed the unmet medical need with the current treatment landscape of recurrent high-grade glioma and potential advantages of CAN-3110.

Barone also discussed Candel’s lead candidate CAN-2409 (aglatimagene besadenovec), an adenoviral replication-defective engineered gene construct encoding the thymidine kinase gene derived from HSV. CAN-2409 is being investigated in a phase 3 trial (NCT02768363) in patients with prostate cancer.She outlined the progress of the trial and future investigations, as well as future research Candel is pursuing.

Click here to read more coverage of ASGCT 2023.

REFERENCE

Barone F, Ling A, Solomon IH, et al. Safety and survival outcomes in recurrent high-grade glioma patients treated with CAN-3110, a first-in-class ICP34.5 expressing oncolytic HSV1. News release. Presented at: ASGCT 2023 Annual Meeting; May 16-20; Los Angeles, California.