AACR 2026 – private biotechs score plenaries

Two private biotech companies, Circle Pharma and Verismo Therapeutics, might have special cause to celebrate the upcoming AACR meeting, having both scored coveted slots at the conference’s clinical trials plenary sessions. 

Circle, armed with a $90m series D raise, recently broadened its pipeline, but the AACR presentation will reveal the first clinical data on its lead, the cyclin A/B-RxL inhibitor CID-078. Verismo is less well endowed, having apparently only raised some $50m so far, but it’s notable for being a spinout from Penn University, and for having Dr Carl June as a founding advisor.

Verismo promises a unique approach to Car-T therapy, something it calls Kir-Car-T. This is a fairly standard, autologous ex vivo procedure, but what makes is different is the design of the Car: while typical therapies use a single transmembrane construct, Verismo’s uncouple the tumour-binding and cell-stimulation domains, the theory being that these don’t couple until the tumour is engaged.

This is meant to reduce unnecessary signalling and stimulation, a phenomenon believed to contribute to T-cell exhaustion, and ultimately to cause loss of efficacy. One problem for Verismo is that SynKIR-110, the project in the AACR clinical plenary, targets mesothelin – a cancer antigen that’s been pursued extensively but has no significant successes to its name.

Macrocycles

Meanwhile, Circle specialises in developing therapeutics based on macrocyclic peptides, which it argues share some of the characteristics of small molecules and biologicals.

CID-078 entered phase 1 in August 2024, and the first data from this study at AACR will shed important light on whether the macrocycle approach has legs. That applies not only to CID-078 but to the rest of Circle’s technology, which has also given rise to the cyclin D1 RxL inhibitor CID-165, for which the company expects to file an IND application this year.

Selected AACR clinical trial plenary presentations

ApexOnco earlier profiled AACR clinical trial plenary presentations featuring ADCs and KRAS inhibition, but also noteworthy will be the first data from the Matisse study of Ipsen’s IPH5201, a project licensed to AstraZeneca.

This molecule is an antibody against CD39, an enzyme thought to degrade ATP; inhibiting CD39 might increase the amount of ATP in the tumour microenvironment, leading to an enhanced anticancer immune response. However, initial phase 1 data, testing IPH5201 monotherapy or in combination with Imfinzi in solid tumours, weren’t encouraging, showing zero responses and median overall survival of 8.2 months.

Matisse, a phase 2 trial, concerns a different setting, neoadjuvant and adjuvant lung cancer, also with or without Imfinzi. Results will be of special interest to Arcus, which is developing the anti-CD39 MAb AB598, and to BioNTech, whose pipeline includes the anti-PD-1 x CD39 bispecific BNT317.

AACR 2026 takes place in San Diego on 17-22 April.