AbClon said Thursday that it has signed a contract research organization (CRO) contract with C&R Research to develop a clinical protocol and apply for a clinical trial for AT101, a blood cancer CAR-T treatment.

AbClon announced that it had successfully developed a clinical end-point candidate for blood cancer CAR-T treatment on March 6. AT101 is a new CAR-T treatment for the treatment of B-cell leukemia and lymphoma.

It has the advantage of eliminating the immunogenicity compared to currently available CAR-T medicines. Under the accord, C&R Research plans to accelerate the clinical entry of AT101.

“We have acquired the key technology of switchable CAR-T that can overcome toxic problems and disease scalability problems which are the disadvantages of the existing CAR-T treatment,” a company official said. “Our company plans to use the technology in developing a next-generation CAR-T treatment for ovarian cancer (AT501) with Seoul National University College of Medicine.”

CAR-T drug is receiving global attention as a drug that has great potential and is expected to have an annual growth of 54 percent over the next 11 years, he added.

AbClon CEO Lee Jong-seo also said, “ We are looking forward to the successful clinical trial of AT101 as we will prepare the clinical trial with C&R Research, a representative clinical trial consortium that has conducted more than 1,200 clinical trials and licensing procedures for 20 years."

The company plans to launch AT101 quickly as unlike Western countries, local patients with blood cancer do not yet benefit from the CAR-T treatment, Lee added.

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