Biotech Pan Cancer T, located in Rotterdam, has secured €10 million in new funding to develop a novel immunotherapy approach that is targeted at triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), one of the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat types of breast cancer. TNBC makes up about 15% of total breast cancer cases, but it is the main cause of a disproportionately large number of deaths because it is resistant to hormone therapies and targeted treatments.
This funding comprises €5 million in equity investment from Van Herk Ventures, Thuja Capital, Erasmus MC O&O Holdings and InnovationQuarter, along with a €5 million Innovation Credit from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The money is going to be used to get Pan Cancer T’s lead program, PCT1:CO-STIM, into its initial clinical trial, which is a big move from research in the lab to studies on patients in real life.
Pan Cancer T is going to start the first-in-human clinical trial in the Netherlands in 2026, and patients will be treated at the best cancer centres in the country. The trial will concentrate on assessing safety and tolerability in TNBC patients, and if there are early signs of effectiveness, the researchers may get the go-ahead to extend their work to other cancer types.
Pan Cancer T targets solid tumors with a radical T-cell therapy
Pan Cancer T is inventing a new generation of T-cell receptor (TCR)-T cell treatment that are to be used in organ tumors only, an issue where standard CAR-T and TCR-T solutions have barely had any positive results. Engineered T-cell therapies have brought amazing changes for diseases of the blood such as leukemia and lymphoma, however, cancerous growths in the body have obstacles like tumor heterogeneity, barriers, and a tumor microenvironment that suppresses the immune system.
The company was set up as a spin-off from Erasmus MC by Prof. Dr Reno Debets and Dr Dora Hammerl, who found that there was a big difference between the achievements of TCR-T therapies in hematological malignancies and their insignificant effect in solid tumors.
“What we want to do is to give the power back to the immune cells of the patient’s body to fight tough-to-treat cancers like TNBC” said Rachel Abbott, CEO of Pan Cancer T.
An innovative target with a broader safety margin
The most important therapy of Pan Cancer T, PCT1:CO-STIM, is an autologous TCR-T cell therapy that is genetically modified to target ROPN1, a new tumor-specific antigen that is found in about 90% of the cases of TNBC and melanoma. Most importantly, ROPN1 is almost completely absent in healthy tissues, which means that it has a safety margin that is much wider than many other TCR-T targets.
This is what sets Pan Cancer T apart from companies such as Immatics, Adaptimmune, and Tessa Therapeutics that frequently target antigens that are also expressed at low levels in normal cells thus, exposing the patient to the risk of toxicities.
The company’s proprietary co-stimulatory enhancement technology makes the company’s approach even more solid. This extra molecular “help” makes T-cell activation and longevity to the maximum level thus, the engineered immune cells can still work in the solid tumours that are hostile due to lack of oxygen and immune repression.
Before we get to cell therapy: activate T cells in the body
Besides her cell-based platform, Pan Cancer T is working on an in vivo version of her technology. The next-gen concept is about converting T cells to the desired type in the patient’s body and it can definitely be cheaper, faster, and more convenient than the current autologous cell therapies.
Should it come through, the plan would be a game-changer in terms of how many patients could get access to the most modern immunotherapies and how quickly they could be treated.
Thinking about clinical impact in the long run
One of the things that Pan Cancer T plans to do in 2026 is to send their application for approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and soon after that, they will be able to enrol the first TNBC patients for trials. The very first experiment will be safety-focused and it will be there where the researchers will look for some signs of benefit to push further development with ROPN1-positive tumors of melanoma, colorectal, ovarian and gastric type besides TNBC.
Despite the fact that TNBC is still connected with poor survival in the long run and a few targeted treatment options, the solution of Pan Cancer T could be a milestone in the battle against aggressive tumors. Now that the company has moved into clinic-stage development, it is one of the immuno-oncology start-ups in Europe that attract the most attention.