Curocell to present preclinical data on allogeneic CAR-T therapy for T-cell malignancies at AACR 2025

Curocell, a Korean biotech company specializing in CAR-T cell therapies, announced that it will present the preclinical results of its allogeneic CAR-T therapy targeting T-cell malignancies at the 2025 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, which is taking place April 25-30 in Chicago.

The investigational therapy, CD5 γδ CAR-T, represents a potential breakthrough in overcoming the limitations of conventional autologous CAR-T therapies, which use a patient’s own T cells.

These therapies have shown limited applicability in treating rare and hard-to-treat T-cell-derived blood cancers, such as T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) and peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL), due to high relapse rates and safety concerns such as fratricide—where CAR-T cells attack each other—and tumor cell contamination during manufacturing.

To address these limitations, Curocell has focused on developing an allogeneic CAR-T platform using healthy donor-derived cells. According to the abstract published ahead of the AACR conference, the company’s CD5 γδ CAR-T therapy demonstrated robust anti-tumor efficacy in a T-ALL xenograft model.

The therapy incorporates several proprietary enhancements, including a membrane-bound IL-18 (mbIL-18) technology that resulted in more than a tenfold increase in CAR-T cell expansion. Additionally, the simultaneous knockdown of CD5 and PD-1 genes helped mitigate fratricide and improved efficacy in the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.

Curocell's multi-pronged approach is being highlighted as a next-generation solution that could redefine treatment options for patients with T-cell malignancies. The company aims to build on these preclinical results to accelerate the development of its T-cell-targeted CAR-T pipeline.

“Innovative allogeneic CAR-T therapies like ours are gaining traction as powerful alternatives to traditional autologous CAR-T treatments,” Curocell CEO Kim Gun-soo said. “By maximizing the therapeutic potential and scalability of our proprietary platform, we aim to become a global leader in the next wave of immune cell therapies for hard-to-treat blood cancers.”

This announcement comes as Curocell is preparing for the commercial launch of Rimqarto, which aims to become Korea’s first approved CAR-T therapy for blood cancer. Developed for relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL), Rimqarto achieved a complete response rate of 67.1 percent in a phase 2 trial and has been selected for Korea’s “Approval application, reimbursement assessment, and drug price negotiation pilot project,” enabling a faster market entry.