Francesca Barone, CSO of Candel Therapeutics, was recently interviewed by Benzinga.
Candel is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing immunotherapies that elicit an individualized, systemic anti-tumor immune response to help patients fight cancer. The company has two main platforms that are currently undergoing clinical trials.
Ms. Barone spoke about the company's work in deadly brain cancers. Its candidate, CAN-3110, is currently undergoing phase 1 trials. It recently published exciting data from the trial showing promising results.
Candel is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing immunotherapies that elicit an individualized, systemic anti-tumor immune response to help patients fight cancer. The company has two main platforms that are currently undergoing clinical trials.
Ms. Barone spoke about the company's work in deadly brain cancers. Its candidate, CAN-3110, is currently undergoing phase 1 trials. It recently published exciting data from the trial showing promising results.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Today we're gonna be joined by a very exciting company
00:05 in the biotech space, Kandel Therapeutics.
00:07 We're lucky enough to talk to Francesca Barone,
00:10 the Chief Scientific Officer.
00:11 Francesca, how are you doing today?
00:13 - I'm very good, thank you for having us,
00:15 talking about Kandel.
00:17 - Of course, thank you for joining us.
00:19 Before we get into it, do you mind just giving us
00:20 a brief overview of Kandel Therapeutics?
00:23 - Sure, so Kandel is a clinical stage
00:26 biopharmaceutical company,
00:28 and we are focused on the developing
00:32 of multimodal biological immunotherapies
00:36 to help patients fight cancer.
00:39 We have two clinical candidates.
00:41 One is CAN 3110, and the other one is CAN 2409.
00:45 They are both viruses that are delivered intratumorally.
00:50 They've got different mechanism of actions,
00:52 and they are already developed
00:54 in different phases of clinical trials.
00:57 CAN 3110 is currently in a phase 1b clinical trials,
01:02 while CAN 2409 is in phase two in lung cancer
01:07 and pancreatic cancer,
01:08 and is actually in phase three in prostate cancer.
01:11 We also have a new discovery platform
01:14 that is based on HSV,
01:16 and has been recently unveiled,
01:19 and is called the Enlightened Discovery Platform.
01:21 - Can you tell us a little bit more about CAN 3110?
01:26 What is it, and how does it work?
01:27 - So CA 3110, CAN 3110, we call it in-house,
01:32 is a clinical candidate.
01:35 It's the second clinical candidate for Kandel Therapeutics.
01:38 It's a real oncolytic virus.
01:41 That means that this is a virus
01:43 that is delivered at the site of the tumor,
01:45 and it kills tumor cells.
01:48 And by doing that, it releases tumor antigens
01:51 that normally are hidden inside the tumor cells themselves.
01:55 It causes inflammation in the tumor,
01:57 and it also attracts immune cells.
02:00 And so you have a reaction against the tumor,
02:02 both at the site of injection, but also systemically,
02:05 because the tumor cell are capable
02:07 to get out in the circulation and go around in the body.
02:12 And so mount a very systemic anti-tumoral response.
02:16 CAN 3110 is different from the other oncolytic viruses.
02:21 All the other oncolytic viruses in development
02:25 tend to be replication defective.
02:27 That means that there've been a removal of a gene
02:31 that causes tumor replication,
02:33 that causes viral replication.
02:35 But in CAN 3110, we've been able to selectively place
02:40 this gene under a control of a promoter
02:43 that enables CAN 3110 only to replicate
02:47 and therefore kill tumor cells.
02:50 - Got it.
02:50 Well, CAN 3110 is currently being evaluated in glioma.
02:54 Can you tell us more about glioma,
02:55 the current treatment landscape,
02:57 and how you're utilizing CAN 3110
02:59 to address the unmet need?
03:01 - So glioma is one of the most daring indications
03:07 in terms of cancer.
03:08 So this has got normally patient with high-grade glioma,
03:12 and in particular, recurrent high-grade glioma,
03:15 that is the indication where CAN 3110
03:18 is currently in development,
03:20 have a very short expectation of life.
03:24 So normally, the median overall survival for this patient
03:28 is less than six to nine months.
03:31 These are patients that have been already treated
03:33 for glioma in the first instance,
03:36 and they've recurred.
03:37 That means that they failed the first standard of care,
03:41 that is surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy.
03:44 And so there are very little therapeutic options
03:47 for these patients.
03:48 There are some experimental treatments,
03:51 but none of them has really shown improvement
03:54 in the overall survival.
03:56 And we have just recently reported instead some data
04:00 that really make us believe that CAN 3110
04:03 is an option for this treatment
04:05 for this patient population.
04:07 - And then Francesca,
04:08 can we dive a little more into recent data
04:10 from the CAN 3110 phase one trial published in Nature
04:14 in the significance?
04:15 - Yeah, these are the data that I was alluding to before.
04:18 In this publication in Nature in October,
04:22 we have reported the FAST,
04:25 the data on the FAST cohort of patient treated.
04:28 So we have 50 patients that have been treated
04:30 with a single dose of CAN 3110,
04:33 and we've achieved the median overall survival
04:35 of 12 months in this patient population
04:38 that is almost doubling the expected median
04:41 overall survival for patients with recurrent high-grade glioma.
04:44 What is very exciting is that when we started to look
04:47 at factors associated with survival,
04:50 we detected that patient that had pre-existent immunity
04:53 against HSV1, that is the type of virus
04:57 that CAN 3110 has been modified from,
05:00 have actually even increased the survival advantage.
05:05 And this means that the pre-existent immunity
05:08 against the virus supports the anti-tumor response.
05:13 And so in this patient,
05:15 we've achieved a median overall survival
05:16 of almost 14 months.
05:19 The patient that had this pre-existent immunity
05:21 were the one that mounted even a stronger
05:24 immune response after treatment.
05:27 And so they were the one that were able
05:29 to expand their T-cell repertoire and T-cell activity,
05:34 cytotoxic activity against the tumor cells.
05:37 - And Francesco, you recently received
05:39 FDA FASTRAC designation for recurrent high-grade glioma.
05:43 What does this designation mean for Kandel,
05:45 and what can we expect results from your phase 1B trial?
05:50 - So this has been a very important recognition
05:52 for us and for the program.
05:54 FASTRAC designation is a recognition from the FDA
05:58 that the program has value and the program is recognized
06:03 to be evaluated in a slightly different way.
06:06 So we have some advantages in terms of being,
06:10 undergoing a faster review for the data.
06:13 And so the FDA is a statement of a really close collaboration
06:17 between the company and the FDA to speed up
06:20 the process of development for encouraging
06:24 investigational agents like CAN3110.
06:28 For us, it's extremely important,
06:30 this support in the next phase of development.
06:32 At the moment, we are testing CAN3110
06:35 in multiple injections cohort.
06:38 The data that I mentioned to you before
06:41 about the pre-existing immunity to HSV1
06:44 is not just in patient that had these antibodies
06:47 to start with, but also in patient that were able
06:50 to acquire antiviral antibodies after the first injection.
06:54 And this makes us really believe that
06:56 if we give multiple injection of CAN3110,
07:00 we can potentiate the response against the virus
07:03 and therefore against the tumor itself.
07:06 So we are very excited about the possibility
07:08 of exploring this in the current open cohort.
07:12 And we have planned to disclose data
07:15 on this multiple injection cohort
07:17 in the second half of 2024.
07:20 - Beautiful.
07:20 Well, outside of what you just outlined,
07:23 what is next for CAN3110?
07:26 - Oh, we are very excited about actually
07:27 the next phases of development of this agent.
07:30 What I told you before is that we've modified this virus
07:34 to be responding to a specific protein
07:38 that is inside the tumor cells.
07:40 And this is not just present
07:42 in recurrent high-grade glioma cells, it's called nesting.
07:46 And it's a protein that is expressed
07:48 in other type of tumors, very aggressive tumors,
07:51 like melanoma, for example,
07:53 or triple negative breast cancer or sarcoma.
07:56 So we now want to test the CAN3110 in this other indication.
08:00 We're gonna do some preclinical work, some safety work,
08:04 and then we're gonna be very excited to test this
08:06 in this new indications.
08:10 - Well, Francesca, thank you so much.
08:12 It's been a pleasure to learn more
08:13 about Candle Therapeutics and CAN3110.
08:17 Again, Candle Therapeutics is trading
08:19 on the NASDAQ ticker CADL.
08:22 Thank you again, Francesca.
08:23 - Thank you so much for having me.
08:25 (upbeat music)
08:28 (upbeat music)
08:30 (upbeat music)