PHILADELPHIA, PA & SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Dispatch Bio has released new preclinical data showing encouraging progress for its lead therapeutic program, DISP-10, a first-of-its-kind combination approach designed to make CAR T-cell therapy viable for solid tumors — a challenge that has eluded the field for decades.
The findings were presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 2025 Annual Meeting and highlight advances from both DISP-10 and the company’s broader Flare platform. Solid tumors remain difficult to treat with immunotherapies due to a lack of tumor-specific targets and a highly suppressive microenvironment. Dispatch aims to solve these limitations by using a tumor-specific virus to “paint” a synthetic antigen onto tumor cells, enabling targeted attack while reshaping the tumor environment to support immune activity.
According to data presented at SITC (Abstract 394), the Flare platform achieved consistent tumor labeling, viral amplification, and tumor-cell clearance across several epithelial tumor models. The technology is designed to give T cells a reliable target and improve immune penetration into tumors that normally resist such therapies.
“These data show that delivering engineered targets specifically to tumor cells allows us to control antigen specificity, while also reprogramming the tumor microenvironment,” said Lex Johnson, Ph.D., co-founder and chief platform officer. He noted that while the company’s first program uses CAR T cells, the Flare approach is modular and could be adapted to other immunotherapy formats.
The company also shared results from DISP-10 (Abstract 393), its first therapeutic candidate. The therapy pairs DV-10 — a virus engineered to express a modified BCMA antigen, IL-18, and CXCL9 — with a clinically validated BCMA-directed CAR T therapy. The viral component installs the synthetic target while triggering local immune activation, creating conditions that enable CAR T cells to operate effectively inside solid tumors.
Across numerous in vitro and in vivo models, DISP-10 produced strong anti-tumor responses with no activity observed in healthy cells. Dispatch plans to begin a Phase 1 clinical trial in 2026 evaluating DISP-10 in multiple types of epithelial-origin tumors, which account for roughly 90% of all solid tumors.
“DISP-10 creates the right biological context for CAR T cells to function in solid tumors,” said Barbra Sasu, Ph.D., chief scientific officer. She added that the consistency of activity seen with different BCMA-targeted therapies strengthens confidence in the program’s clinical potential.
The results mark a significant step as Dispatch advances toward first-in-human testing and continues developing platform technologies aimed at widening the reach of next-generation immunotherapies.
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