Anocca has dosed the first patients in its phase 1 VIDAR‑1 clinical programme, marking the initial clinical use of ANOC‑001, a precision TCR‑T cell therapy targeting KRAS G12V mutations in pancreatic cancer.
The company confirmed that multiple sites across Europe have now administered the treatment.
ANOC‑001 is the first therapy to emerge from Anocca’s programme in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, a highly aggressive cancer type with a five‑year survival rate below 10%.
The therapy is designed for patients whose tumours carry specific KRAS mutations, which occur in the vast majority of pancreatic cancer cases.
The product was discovered, developed and manufactured at Anocca’s facilities in Sweden and is the first non‑viral gene‑edited T‑cell therapy to be evaluated in Europe.
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, explained: “The VIDAR‑1 clinical programme is designed to evaluate multiple TCR‑T product candidates targeting distinct KRAS mutations and HLA combinations. 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 for phase 1 of the multi‑centre VIDAR‑1 trial are ongoing across eight university hospitals in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and The Netherlands.
