Anocca AB (‘Anocca’ or the ‘Company’), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing advanced T-cell immunotherapies, announced the successful dosing of the first patients across multiple clinical sites with ANOC-001, a novel T cell receptor-modified T cell therapy (TCR-T)[1] targeting KRAS G12V mutations in an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer.

ANOC-001 is the first product to enter Anocca’s VIDAR-1 clinical programme, which focuses on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The therapy is designed for patients whose tumours carry a specific mutation in the KRAS gene. The product candidate has been discovered, developed and manufactured by Anocca at its in-house facilities in Sweden. ANOC-001 is the first non-viral gene-edited T cell therapy to be evaluated in Europe, with the deployment of this technology enabling scalable product development and future commercialisation.

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest cancer types, with a five-year survival rate below 10% (1). Despite recent advances there are currently no definitive treatments for patients with progressed disease (2). KRAS mutations are one of the most common cancer mutations and are implicated in pancreatic, lung and colorectal cancers. G12V and G12D mutations in KRAS affect around 90% of pancreatic cancer patients. VIDAR-1 addresses this unmet need by engineering the immune system’s T-cells to recognise and attack cancer cells carrying the KRAS mutation.

Reagan Jarvis, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Anocca, said: “The dosing of patients marks an important milestone for Anocca, and demonstrates our ability to develop, manufacture and clinically deploy precision TCR-T cell therapy products. The novel ANOC-001 clinical candidate was developed with Anocca’s proprietary analytical platform that maps targets and identifies, characterises and engineers T-cell receptors. We are grateful to our team, investors and partners whose efforts and participation made this milestone possible.”

Hugh Salter, Chief Scientific Officer, added: “The VIDAR-1 clinical programme is designed to evaluate multiple TCR-T product candidates targeting distinct KRAS mutations and HLA combinations [2]. ANOC-001 is the first product in this series and additional products targeting different forms of mutant KRAS will be introduced into the uniquely designed clinical programme. By using non-viral gene editing technology, we are able to scale delivery of highly precise therapies to broader patient populations. We would like to thank our clinical collaborators for their support as well as the study participants and their families.”

Recruitment and manufacture are ongoing for Phase I of the multi-centre VIDAR-1 trial, which is being conducted at eight leading university hospitals across Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and The Netherlands.