Century Therapeutics, Candel Therapeutics and MacroGenics have all used their third-quarter earnings releases to disclose how they’re fine-tuning their clinical pipelines to conserve cash.
Century has called time on the CALiPSO-1 trial of its allogeneic cell therapy CNTY-101 in patients with B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases. Five patients have already received the therapy in the trial, which has, so far, demonstrated a “favorable safety profile” with no dose-limiting toxicities or immune-effector-cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome, according to the company.
“The limited but emerging clinical data suggests encouraging clinical activity in refractory patient populations,” Century added.
Still, the biotech has discontinued the trial as part of “clinical development re-prioritization efforts” that will see the company continue to assess CNTY-101 in the phase 1/2 Caramel trial, also for B-cell-mediated autoimmune disease.
It was a similar story over at Candel, which is pausing the development of the off-the-shelf adenovirus immunotherapy called CAN-2409, also known as aglatimagene besadenovec, in borderline resectable pancreatic cancer (PDAC).
The biotech acknowledged that the FDA had already granted fast track and orphan drug tags for CAN-2409 in this indication, but said it needed to pause the PDAC program in order to focus on its top priorities for CAN-2409 of prostate cancer and non-small cell lung cancer.
CAN-2409 already completed a phase 3 trial in prostate cancer, and a midstage study in NSCLC is due to kick off in the second quarter of 2026.
Candel said it will only reignite the PDAC program if it can source some “external, non-dilutive funding.”
Meanwhile, MacroGenics decided to “realign” its “pipeline priorities” when it came to lorigerlimab. The company has been assessing the bispecific DART molecule, which targets both PD-1 and CTLA-4, in a phase 2 study of 150 patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.
A clinical update on that study had been expected in the second half of this year, but MacroGenics revealed in its earnings document that, after reviewing interim data from the study, “we have decided not to pursue further development of lorigerlimab in prostate cancer.”
“Despite this decision, we remain committed to exploring lorigerlimab’s potential in ovarian and other gynecologic cancers and continue to enroll patients in the phase 2 LINNET study,” the company added.