Seeking Mesothelioma Patients for New Cell Therapy Trial
Research & Clinical Trials
Written by Sean Marchese | Edited by Amy Edel
A clinical trial testing a new type of cell therapy for mesothelioma is actively recruiting patients at sites across the country, including Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. This is an early-stage trial.
The therapy, called SynKIR-110, is a lab-engineered cell treatment designed to target mesothelin, a protein found on the surface of most mesothelioma tumor cells. The trial is open to patients with either pleural mesothelioma or peritoneal mesothelioma, as well as ovarian cancer and cholangiocarcinoma. Early results were presented this year at a major cancer research conference.
Dr. Janos Tanyi, the trial’s principal investigator and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, said the early data support continuing to study the approach. “These data are significant because patients with mesothelin-expressing solid tumors continue to face significant and urgent needs for better treatments,” he told us.
Results So Far From STAR-101
Researchers found tumor shrinkage for 1 of 3 patients at the highest dose level of SynKIR-110 tested so far, classified as a partial response. That response was still ongoing after 3 months. The trial, known as STAR-101, is still working out the right dose, so enrollment and dose escalation are ongoing.
Pointing to the trial’s safety results specifically, Dr. Tanyi noted that only 3 out of 9 patients treated so far had mild cytokine release syndrome. This is a common and usually manageable side effect of cell therapies, and no patients had neurotoxicity. In the first nine patients treated, no dose-limiting side effects, no severe cytokine release syndrome and no neurotoxicity were reported.
How the Therapy Works
SynKIR-110 is built from a patient’s own T cells, a type of immune cell, which are collected, modified in a lab, then infused back into the patient. The modification trains those T cells to recognize and attack tumor cells that carry high levels of mesothelin, a protein overexpressed in mesothelioma and a small number of other cancers.
What sets this therapy apart from earlier CAR T-cell treatments is its design. Traditional CAR T-cells often wear out over time, a problem called T-cell exhaustion This particularly happens when fighting solid tumors like mesothelioma rather than blood cancers. SynKIR-110 uses a different signaling structure, borrowed in part from natural killer cells, intended to keep the T cells active longer.
How to Join the STAR-101 Clinical Trial
People with advanced pleural or peritoneal mesothelioma whose tumors express mesothelin, are eligible to enroll. Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, the University of Pennsylvania and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where Dr. Mehmet Altan is a site investigator, are all enrolling patients.
Additional sites nationwide are as well. The trial’s developer, Verismo Therapeutics, has continued to expand access to new locations as enrollment continues.
If you’re interested in more information or enrolling in the trial, a Patient Advocate or your mesothelioma doctor can help you. SynKIR-110 remains investigational. It isn’t an approved mesothelioma treatment yet.
Results of this clinical trial so far come from a small group of patients across the first few dose levels tested. Researchers are still determining the right dose to carry into further study. But early safety data without serious side effects, paired with a tumor response in a heavily pretreated cancer, is the kind of early signal that keeps a solid-tumor cell therapy trial worth watching.
