- The stock price of Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: BLCM) has increased by over 15% pre-market. This is why it happened.
The stock price of Bellicum Pharmaceuticals Inc (NASDAQ: BLCM) – a leader in developing novel, controllable cellular immunotherapies for cancers – has increased by over 15% pre-market. Investors appear to be responding to the company announcing the publication of a case report using the company’s CaspaCIDe (inducible caspase-9, or iC9) safety switch. The letter to the editor titled “Utility of Safety Switch to Abrogate CD 19 CAR T Cell-Associated Neurotoxicity” appeared as an ahead-of-print publication in the digital edition of Blood, a journal published by The American Society of Hematology.
The publication detailed a case report from an investigator-sponsored trial (IST) at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center where a Phase 1/2 trial is ongoing to test the safety and efficacy of autologous T lymphocytes genetically modified to express a CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and iC9. And a patient in the dose expansion cohort of this trial experienced a high grade neurologic adverse event with persistence of grade 3-4 immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS) for 72 hours despite standard care, and rimiducid was subsequently given per protocol to activate iC9.
Within 12 hours of rimiducid administration, ICANS grade improved from 3 to 1 and was fully resolved after four days. This publication marked the first reported clinical use of the iC9 safety switch to mitigate a severe CAR-T-mediated adverse event refractory to standard of care treatment.
KEY QUOTES:
“Given the risks of ICANS and other CAR-T cell-mediated adverse events, the inclusion of the iC9 switch has the potential to dramatically improve the safety of cellular immunotherapies. We are also encouraged by the anti-leukemic response we observed in this patient even with the use of the iC9 switch.”
— Matthew Foster, M.D., University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
“We remain enthusiastic about our switch technology, which as shown in this case report and in the extensive CaspaCIDe experience from the rivo-cel program, can improve the overall benefit/risk profile of cell therapy. We believe this clinical experience validates our continued efforts to incorporate this technology into a growing number of internal and collaborator programs.”
— Rick Fair, President and CEO of Bellicum Pharmaceuticals
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