Candel Therapeutics presents preclinical data on immunotherapy candidate

Candel Therapeutics announced the presentation of a poster during the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, taking place April 5 through 10 in San Diego, which focused on a first-in-class multimodal immunotherapy candidate for induction of tertiary lymphoid structures, being developed as a novel therapeutic strategy for solid tumors from Candel’s enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform. TLSs are ectopic lymphocyte aggregation structures found in the tumor microenvironment and their induction could potentially improve anti-tumor immunity. The presentation describes the development of an investigational TLS-inducing multimodal therapeutic using the enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform. The enLIGHTEN Advanced Analytics suite was applied to immune checkpoint inhibitor-treated patient datasets, and the predicted payload components included factors regulating the development of TLS. Delivery of two unique in silico predicted payload combinations, using an enLIGHTEN programmable vector, resulted in TLS induction, monotherapy anti-tumoral activity, and enhanced responses in combination with anti-PD-1 antibody therapy in mouse models of solid tumors. “The recent observation that the presence of TLS in tumors is an important prognostic factor associated with an improved response to immunotherapy has fueled drug development efforts in this area. However, TLS assembly is complicated and requires a series of events, including antigen presentation, stromal cell activation, and immune cell activation and aggregation, which are difficult to obtain with a single therapeutic,” said Francesca Barone, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Candel. “The enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform enables the generation of multimodal agents through the integration of artificial intelligence-driven payload combinations into programmable vectors. This makes it possible to create a single asset that may induce TLS formation and enhance anti-tumor immunity.”