Shares of Alaunos Therapeutics are down $1.73, or 51%, to $1.67 in afternoon trading, which has been attributed by a Wall Street analyst to a blog post about a colon cancer patient with TP53 mutation who was involved in the company’s clinical trial for an investigative TCR T-Cell immunotherapy for tumor based cancers. A relative of Danielle Woldt, who is identified as patient number two and “the first colon cancer patient in the study,” stated in a post to the “GiveSendGo” crowdfunding site: “At some point during the past weeks Danielle started to feel better and have more energy. She even cooked a few meals for us, which she hasn’t done in a long while. It appeared the Immunotherapy was having a positive effect, which was evidenced in the July CT Scan. You’ll recall her primary tumor shrank 27% even though she’d been off chemo for several months to facilitate the trial. Then she started to feel bad again. Colon cancer is famous for adapting when pressured. It was under a lot of pressure, specifically the TP53 mutation the targeted therapy was engineered to seek out and kill… Septembers scan shows that the cancer has mutated. In my words it has gone ‘Willy nilly.’ It is not a good report. Inasmuch as the immunotherapy targeted the TP53 mutation specifically, which is now in the history books as it has mutated into something else, all those really cool T Cells are all dressed up with no place to go… We have been referred to the MD Anderson ‘Early phase clinical trial team’ who called a few minutes ago to set up an appointment. Danielle just filled out some electronic paperwork for a biopsy back in Houston as soon as it can be scheduled, probably in a couple weeks, which is when we’ll meet with the new doctor who will be guiding the next step treatment(s). We anticipate probably starting with ‘Lonsurf TAS-102 with Avastin’ chemo to see if it buys us some time. Any new clinical trials will likely be in Houston at MD Anderson, the worlds leading cancer center.” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Prakhar Agrawal pointed to the blog post about the colon cancer patient in a note to investors, stating according to Bloomberg that he had believed “some optimism related to patient #2 was getting priced-in given the stock move in the last 1-2 weeks.” Earlier this month, Alaunos Therapeutics announced early clinical findings from the TCR-T Library Phase 1/2 trial, an open label, dose escalation study being conducted at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center that is enrolling patients with non-small cell lung, colorectal, endometrial, pancreatic, ovarian, and bile duct cancers that have a matching human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, and hotspot mutation pairing in Alaunos’ TCR library. “The first patient dosed was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer with a KRAS G12D mutation, matching one of the ten TCRs within the Company’s TCR library… The company has dosed a second patient in the study, diagnosed with colon cancer, who has been treated at the second dose level and has cleared the 28-day safety window. Data is scheduled to be presented during a proffered talk at CICON, which is being held in New York, NY from September 28 – October 1,” the company stated.
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