Dr Magda Meissner of Velindre Cancer Service is the Principal Investigator in a new clinical trial called ATTEST, using pioneering virus technology to infect cancer cells and start producing an anti-tumour drug from inside the tumour cells.

The discovery was made and developed by scientists in Professor Alan Parker’s lab at Cardiff University and the clinical trial is being carried out by the Cardiff Cancer Research Partnership between Velindre Cancer Centre and the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

Accession Therapeutics has developed a proprietary technology platform, TROCEPT. The first drug candidate generated by the platform, TROCEPT-01 will be used in ATTEST, a first-in-human Phase 1 trial in solid tumour patients.

TROCEPT-01 encodes a clinically validated immune checkpoint inhibitor transgene as the payload. Once cancer cells are infected, they will start producing and secreting the drug payload.

David Fluck, Executive Medical Director at Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, said:

“Research gives an opportunity to discover new treatments and positively impact the lives of people in Cardiff, Wales, and across the world.

It’s exciting to see my colleagues making such an impact and I look forward to hearing more about this trial, and other projects taking place in at the Cardiff Cancer Research Partnership, and across our Health Board area. I’m grateful to Velindre and Cardiff University for supporting us with this important work.”

Bent Jakobsen, CEO of Accession Therapeutics, said

“We anticipate the clinical data will show that the virus gets to the tumours when given systemically and the drug is produced within the tumours as well as being safe and well tolerated.

“In TROCEPT, we have created a highly versatile platform, truly the first platform that can enable novel drugs to be made inside cancer cells

“TROCEPT gives us multiple opportunities to generate valuable products to transform outcomes for cancer patients.’