June's latest Car-T Dispatch

Fresh from seeing Capstan Therapeutics sold to AbbVie for $2bn, Dr Carl June, the co-founder of this in vivo Car-T company, is on to his next venture. Dispatch Bio, which he co-founded three years ago, has come out of stealth mode, last month topping up a 2023 $113m series A raise with an additional $100m. Dispatch's work remains largely undisclosed, but its latest claim is the use of a virus to deliver an undisclosed antigen to tumour cells, before a Car-T therapy against that antigen is infused to hit the cancer. It's not clear how specifically tumour cells can be tagged this way, but June has separately published work on combining an oncolytic virus with Car-T, so it might be that Dispatch also relies on oncolytic viruses. Dispatch preclinically engineered Car-T cells to express IL-9R to enhance cell differentiation, but again it's unclear whether its latest work incorporates this. June's University of Pennsylvania lab is most famous for originating Kymriah, and before Capstan June co-founded Tmunity, which tried to develop a Crispr-edited Car-T therapy but became mired in delays and a clinical hold. Tmunity's remains were sold to Gilead for a nominal amount in 2022.