Weijia Fang, MD, and Guoqiang Ai, MD, on the Future of IMC001 in Gastric and Colorectal Cancer

“Our principle using the bridging drug is only to stabilize. We do not hope to choose a very effective method to make our patient better... in fact, we cannot do that because in the cell therapy stage we definitely have no very good choice.”

At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2022 Congress, September 9-13, 2022, in Paris, France, Weijia Fang, MD, Department of Medical Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, presented data from a phase 1 clinical trial (NCT05028933) for IMC001, an investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy which targets the EpCAM protein. The ongoing clinical trial is treating patients with advanced gastric and colorectal cancers who have no standard treatment options remaining.

In an interview with CGTLive, Fang commented on a limitation of the clinical trial’s design that was pointed out by Alessandra Curioni, MD, Center of Hematology and Oncology, University Hospital Zurich, during an invited discussion of the study presentation at ESMO. The limitation related to the use of a bridging chemotherapy before the administration of IMC001.

Guoqiang Ai, MD, Immunofoco Biotech Co., also joined the interview to expand on future plans for the clinical trial, describing the planned second stage, which will combine IMC001 with radiofrequency or microwave ablation therapy. Fang rounded out the interview by discussing potential future research into methods of determining which patients can benefit most from cell therapies, mentioning liquid biopsy as an area of interest.

For more coverage of ESMO 2022, click here.