Benzinga | Jul 1, 2021 09:01AM EDT

Avalon GloboCare Announces Its Planned Acquisition Target, SenlangBio, Has Initiated First-In-Human Clinical Trial In Recurrent Brain Cancer

Avalon GloboCare Corp. (NASDAQ:AVCO) ("Avalon" or "the Company"), a clinical-stage global developer of cell-based technologies and therapeutics, today announced that its planned acquisition target, SenlangBio, has initiated a first-in-human clinical trial evaluating anti-EphA2 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for recurrent glioblastoma. Glioblastoma is the most common type of primary brain tumor and a devastating and aggressive cancer with few treatment options.

SenlangBio's anti-EphA2 CAR-T is a first-in-class cellular therapy and to our best knowledge, the first ever EphA2-targeted CAR-T with reported clinical trial data. Erythropoietin-producing hepatocellular receptor tyrosine kinase class A2 (EphA2) is a tumor-associated antigen expressed on glioblastoma cells but not on non-cancerous, normal cells of the brain. The anti-EphA2 CAR-T therapy is designed to attack the brain cancer while preserving healthy brain cells.

Currently approved CAR-T therapies have been successful for patients with difficult to treat CD19-positive leukemias and lymphomas. However, prior attempts of treating solid tumor patients with CAR-T therapies have thus far not been shown to be effective. SenlangBio is developing next generation CAR-T therapies for solid tumors by focusing on strategic cancer cell targets such as EphA2 that are specific to cancer cells.

Three patients have received the starting dose of anti-EphA2 CAR-T in this dose-escalation trial. Preliminary clinical trial results were recently published in the June 2021 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Oncology. To date, the therapy has been well-tolerated and the CAR T-cells have demonstrated persistent activity over four weeks after initial dosing in patients.

Prior to initiation of the clinical trial, SenlangBio successfully completed pre-clinical feasibility testing of its anti-EphA2 CAR-T and obtained Institution Review Board (IRB) approval from Xuanwu Hospital, the teaching hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing, China, where the trial is being conducted (NIH clinical trial registration number: NCT 03423992).