Singapore, Nov. 28 -- Australia's Imugene has entered a strategic co-development collaboration with Chinese startup JW Therapeutics to evaluate a novel combination immunotherapy for patients with advanced, hard-to-treat solid tumours.

The partnership will investigate the use of Imugene's oncolytic virus CF33-CD19 (onCARlytics) together with JW's CD19-directed autologous CAR-T cell therapy, Carteyva(R), in an effort to extend the benefits of CD19 CAR-T technology beyond blood cancers into solid tumours.

Under the agreement, the companies will first undertake a series of preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies, before progressing to a Phase 1 investigator-initiated trial in China, to be conducted at leading CAR-T clinical centres.

The t...