Benzinga | Oct 1, 2021 08:03AM EDT

Rubius Therapeutics Reports Preclinical Data For RTX-224 Will Be Presented At Society For Immunotherapy Of Cancer Meeting Nov. 12 At 7 a.m. EST

Rubius Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:RUBY), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that is genetically engineering red blood cells to create an entirely new class of cellular medicines called Red Cell Therapeutics(tm) for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases, today announced it will present preclinical data for RTX-224, a broad immune costimulatory agonist for the treatment of cancer, at the upcoming Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer's (SITC) 36th Annual Meeting which is being held from November 10-14, 2021, in Washington, D.C., and virtually.

RTX-224 is an allogeneic cellular therapy that is engineered to express hundreds of thousands of copies of 4-1BB ligand (4-1BBL) and interleukin-12 (IL-12) on the cell surface. RTX-224 is designed as a broad immune agonist of both adaptive and innate responses, activating CD8+ and CD4+ T cells, promoting antigen presentation and activating and expanding NK cells. It is expected to produce a broad and potent anti-tumor T cell response, an innate immune response and have anti-tumor activity in those tumor types with known sensitivity to T cell killing, including tumor types with high mutational burden, PD-L1 expression and prior responsiveness to checkpoint inhibitors.

"At SITC, we plan to present preclinical data indicating that RTX-224 activates immune cells in the spleen and blood, leading to their trafficking into the tumor microenvironment to deliver an anti-tumor effect in our preclinical models," said Laurence Turka, M.D., chief scientific officer of Rubius Therapeutics. "The combination of IL-12 and 4-1BB ligand has the potential to broadly induce an immune response in patients with solid tumors and may serve as the bridge between the innate and adaptive immune systems. These preclinical data are encouraging, and we plan to submit an Investigational New Drug application to the FDA by year end."

Details of the poster are as follows:

Poster Title: RTX-224, An Engineered Allogeneic Red Cell Therapeutic Expressing 4-1BBL and IL-12, Activates Immune Cells in Blood and Spleen to Promote Tumor Growth Inhibition in Mice

Abstract Number: 208 (ePoster)

Date, Time and Location: Friday, November 12, 2021, at 7 a.m. EST through Sunday, November 14, 2021, at 5 p.m. EST on the SITC website: www.sitcancer.org/2021