To advance the clinical trial of a new personalized cell therapy drug for breast cancer patients with no treatment options. With this objective, El Corte Inglés has given the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) a check for 314,245 euros, which will be used to finance an innovative trial led by Dr. Julio Delgado of the Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS (August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute).
The funds come from donations collected during the breast cancer campaign annually organized by El Corte Inglés every October 19, on the occasion of World Breast Cancer Day. For more than two decades, the group has maintained close collaboration with the AECC and has already financed a total of four projects from various centers in Spain to advance research into this disease.
The new study represents the fifth project supported by El Corte Inglés and is a continuation of its previous donation, when the department store group donated more than 280 thousand euros to support this same study at Hospital Clínic. The treatment is currently in phase I, at which point its safety and side effects for administration in patients are checked.
The objective of this new treatment is totally innovative, as it aims to genetically reprogram the patient's own immune system, through ARI-HER2+ cells. For now, experiments carried out on this new drug confirm its low toxicity and its potential efficacy for HER2-positive breast cancer patients, one of the most aggressive types.
Thus, the trial will evaluate the toxicity and efficacy of these cells in treating the disease, in addition to establishing the most appropriate dose for the treatment. This study aims to lay the groundwork for the development of a new personalized cell therapy drug that can be effective in patients with no other treatment options.