Newcastle Hospitals Treat the First Patient with Achilles Therapeutics Clonal Neoantigen Therapy

As the ATMP sector continues to innovate and make ground breaking progress despite the COVID-19 pandemic, lead NA-ATTC partner The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NuTH) has recently delivered a world first to treat a melanoma patient.

On the 28th May 2020 Prof Ruth Plummer and the team at The Sir Bobby Robson Cancer Trials Research Centre, Newcastle Hospitals were the first to treat a patient in the Achilles Therapeutics THETIS Phase I/II Study in patients with recurrent or metastatic malignant melanoma. This is the first tumour infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy to specifically target clonal neoantigens (cNeT) – antigens believed to be expressed on all tumour cells. Not only was this the first patient to receive treatment in this study but also the first ever patient to receive this type of therapy.

The THETIS study is an open-label, multi-centre Phase I/II trial evaluating the safety, tolerability and clinical efficacy of cNeT therapy as a single dose in patients with recurrent or metastatic malignant melanoma.