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CARsgen Therapeutics Holdings Limited, a company focused on developing innovative CAR T-cell therapies, and Dispatch Bio, a biotech company engineering a universal treatment across solid tumours leveraging its first-in-class Flare platform, announced a clinical collaboration to conduct a phase 1 trial in China, planned to begin in 2026.
The trial will evaluate DISP-11, an investigational therapy leveraging Dispatch’s first-in-class Flare platform – including DV-10, the company’s novel tumour-specific virus – and CARsgen’s zevorcabtagene autoleucel (zevor-cel, R&D code: CT053), an autologous B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeting CAR T-cell therapy, in patients suffering from solid tumours. Zevor-cel is approved by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) in China for the treatment of multiple myeloma.
“CARsgen is working to transform outcomes for patients with solid tumours by advancing the potential of CAR T technologies,” said Zonghai Li, M.D., Ph.D., founder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and chief scientific officer of CARsgen. “Dispatch’s Flare platform offers a differentiated and highly complementary approach to expanding where and how CAR T can be applied, particularly for solid tumours lacking specific targets. We are excited to explore this combination as part of our broader efforts to unlock meaningful benefit for patients.”
In the planned study, patients with solid tumours of epithelial origin, which account for 90% of all solid tumours, will first receive DV-10, followed by zevor-cel.
“We are working to expand the impact of the Flare platform, and this collaboration represents a step forward in a region with infrastructure for efficient and impactful oncology development and significant unmet medical need,” said Sabah Oney, Ph.D., chief executive officer of Dispatch. “CARsgen’s scientific rigor and track record of rapid clinical advancement make them an ideal partner. As our second collaboration with a company that has successfully commercialized a CAR T therapy, this partnership reinforces the growing confidence in Flare’s potential across a variety of immunotherapies and will help shape our global development strategy.”
Zevor-cel is a fully human, autologous BCMA CAR T-cell product for the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM). Zevor-cel was approved by the NMPA on February 23, 2024, for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory MM who have progressed after at least three prior lines of therapy (including a proteasome inhibitor and an immunomodulatory agent). Zevor-cel received Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) and Orphan Drug designations from the US FDA in 2019.
Immunotherapies have had limited success in solid tumours due to the lack of tumour-specific targets and an immunosuppressive microenvironment. Dispatch’s first-in-class Flare platform addresses these barriers by systemically delivering a tumour-specific virus that paints a universal synthetic antigen (Flare) on tumour cells, enabling precise recognition by T cells, while reshaping the tumour microenvironment to support immune activity. At the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 2025 Annual Meeting, Dispatch presented preclinical findings on DV-10 in combination with a clinically validated BCMA-directed CAR T. These data, presented alongside additional preclinical findings supporting the Flare platform, underscore the safety, specificity and therapeutic promise of this approach.
CARsgen is a biopharmaceutical company focusing on developing innovative CAR T-cell therapies to address the unmet clinical needs including but not limited to hematologic malignancies, solid tumours and autoimmune diseases.
Dispatch Bio was founded with a bold purpose: to help create a world where all cancer patients can be cured. To achieve this, the company is engineering a universal treatment across solid tumours, leveraging its first-in-class Flare platform. This novel approach combines the strengths of immunotherapy with a tumour-specific virus, both engineered to clear tumour cells with precision and power.
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