CarThera announces that the first patient has been enrolled and treated in a clinical trial evaluating the safety of using its SonoCloud® technology in combination with checkpoint inhibitors for the treatment of brain metastases from melanoma (NCT04021420). In this trial, anti-PD1 alone or in combination with anti-CTLA4 are administered in patients before SonoCloud-mediated Blood Brain Barrier opening (BBB). BBB opening can help boost the brain’s immunity and increase brain penetration of newly approved systemically delivered immunotherapies, such as checkpoint inhibitors. This could translate into controlling brain disease with the same magnitude as peripheral diseases, improving clinical outcomes for many patients worldwide.

CarThera will partner with Lantheus for the supply of microbubbles. Lantheus Holdings, Inc., parent company of Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc., is a global leader in the development, manufacture and commercialization of innovative diagnostic imaging agents and products. Lantheus’ microbubbles will become an integrated component of the SonoCloud product. This agreement strengthens the configuration of the SonoCloud system and secures the supply of the microbubbles for the coming years.

Under the terms of the clinical collaboration, KIYATEC will conduct ex vivo drug response profiling on glioblastoma tissue samples from patients enrolled in CarThera’s clinical study. CarThera will benefit from having ex vivo drug response profiling for patients enrolled in its study, while KIYATEC will correlate its patient-specific, pre-treatment drug response predictions with actual clinical outcomes of patients in CarThera’s study. For both companies, this collaboration represents an opportunity to enrich their portfolios of clinical evidence with the goal of helping clinicians improve outcomes for their patients with glioblastoma.