ATTEST – First patient recruited in clinical trial using cancer-targeting virus
The first patient has been treated in a clinical trial that is testing a pioneering virus technology – which originated at Cardiff University – that infects cancer cells, producing an anti-tumour drug from inside the tumour cells.
Accession Therapeutics’ ATTEST trial is a first-in-human Phase 1 trial in solid tumour patients, testing TROCEPT-01 (also known as ATTR-01). The trial is being delivered by Velindre University NHS Trust and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.
The ATTEST trial is recruiting into leading UK clinical sites – including Cardiff – with plans to extend to Spain. Professor Adel Samson at Leeds University Hospital is the Chief Investigator of the study.
Delivery of the trial in Cardiff is being aided by the Cardiff Cancer Research Partnership – a collaboration which aims to improve and coordinate cancer research in Wales, increase patient access to new clinical trials, and accelerate the development of new treatments. The technology behind TROCEPT-01 was originally developed by scientists in Professor Alan Parker’s lab at Cardiff University, before being licensed out to Accession Therapeutics Ltd in 2021. Accession has since progressed the programme through development and into the clinic. TROCEPT-01 uses a viral-based approach, precisely engineered to spare healthy tissue and only target the tumour and metastatic lesions.
The new therapy provides a dual-therapeutic effect, by first recognising and infecting only cancer cells, making more copies of itself, causing the infected cancer cells to burst. Secondly, the virus delivers a gene into cancer cells that encodes for a checkpoint inhibitor – a form of immunotherapy that blocks proteins on immune cells. This turns the cancer cells into factories producing the anti-tumour drug and triggering a powerful and precise immune response to act on the tumour.
