Ann: Positive pre-IND meeting with FDA for Phase 1 CAR T study, page-7

Jenn mentioned at the investor meet last year CHM were "incredibly excited about this asset" and that Carl June the inventor and godfather of Car-T was actually also involved in the development of CHD17 out of U Penn over the last 10 years of pre-clinical work. Most of the work was done by Xianxin Hua and his team. Carl June also named on the extract in Nature publication.

Statement from CHM at time of licensing.

More than a decade of research and optimization has gone into development of the novel CDH17 CAR T cell therapy, developed by leading cellular immunotherapy scientist Xianxin Hua, MD, PhD, and his team. Dr Hua is a professor of Cancer Biology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, an investigator at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and a Harrington Scholar Innovator.

From the Nature Cancer publication extract:

Gastrointestinal cancers (GICs) and neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are often refractory to therapy after metastasis. Adoptive cell therapy using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, though remarkably efficacious for treating leukemia, is yet to be developed for solid tumors such as GICs and NETs. Here we isolated a llama-derived nanobody, VHH1, and found that it bound cell surface adhesion protein CDH17 upregulated in GICs and NETs. VHH1-CAR T cells (CDH17CARTs) killed both human and mouse tumor cells in a CDH17-dependent manner. CDH17CARTs eradicated CDH17-expressing NETs and gastric, pancreatic and colorectal cancers in either tumor xenograft or autochthonous mouse models. Notably, CDH17CARTs do not attack normal intestinal epithelial cells, which also express CDH17, to cause toxicity, likely because CDH17 is localized only at the tight junction between normal intestinal epithelial cells. Thus, CDH17 represents a class of previously unappreciated tumor-associated antigens that is ‘masked’ in healthy tissues from attack by CAR T cells for developing safer cancer immunotherapy.

A very good write up about the background of Carl's work here and the story of Emily Whitehead the first Car-T patient https://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/Fulltext/2022/03200/The_Incredible_Story_of_Emily_Whitehead___CAR.1.aspx

Good to see this 3rd generation Car-t a step closer to Phase 1 clinical trials, wont be long until they kick off now.