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Karina C. Scheiner

The Netherlands Cancer Institute

Publishes on CAR-T cell therapy research, Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers, Immunotherapy and Immune Responses. 2 papers and 40 citations.

2Publications
40Total Citations

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Top publicationsby citations

Personalized, autologous neoantigen-specific T cell therapy in metastatic melanoma: a phase 1 trial
Jessica S.W. Borgers, Divya Lenkala, Victoria Kohler et al.|Nature Medicine|2025
Cited by 40Open Access

Abstract New treatment approaches are warranted for patients with advanced melanoma refractory to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) or BRAF-targeted therapy. We designed BNT221, a personalized, neoantigen-specific autologous T cell product derived from peripheral blood, and tested this in a 3 + 3 dose-finding study with two dose levels (DLs) in patients with locally advanced or metastatic melanoma, disease progression after ICB, measurable disease (Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.1) and, where appropriate, BRAF-targeted therapy. Primary and secondary objectives were evaluation of safety, highest tolerated dose and anti-tumor activity. We report here the non-pre-specified, final results of the completed monotherapy arm consisting of nine patients: three at DL1 (1 × 10 8 –1 × 10 9 cells) and six at DL2 (2 × 10 9 –1 × 10 10 cells). Drug products (DPs) were generated for all enrolled patients. BNT221 was well tolerated across both DLs, with no dose-limiting toxicities of grade 3 or higher attributed to the T cell product observed. Specifically, no cytokine release, immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity or macrophage activation syndromes were reported. A dose of 5.0 × 10 8 –1.0 × 10 10 cells was identified for further study conduct. Six patients showed stable disease as best overall response, and tumor reductions (≤20%) were reported for four of these patients. In exploratory analyses, multiple mutant-specific CD4 + and CD8 + T cell responses were generated in each DP. These were cytotoxic, polyfunctional and expressed T cell receptors with broad functional avidities. Neoantigen-specific clonotypes were detected after treatment in blood and tumor. Our results provide key insights into this neoantigen-specific adoptive T cell therapy and demonstrate proof of concept for this new therapeutic approach. ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT04625205 .