The (early) winner at ASCO was three decades in the making

As scientists and investors pored over abstracts ahead of the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, the big winner came as some surprise. Iovance Biotherapeutics, a small company at work on an unproven technology, came through with some promising results in skin and cervical cancers.

Iovance’s work stems from Dr. Steven Rosenberg, who has been chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute since 1974. Back in 1985, Rosenberg came up with tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, which are natural hunters of tumor tissue drawn from patients' own immune defenses. But for the past 30 years or so, TILs always failed more patients than they cured, and they were exceedingly difficult to manufacture.

Now, as Iovance’s ASCO data suggest, TILs could be poised to become the next CAR-Ts, making good on decades of scientific toil.