On February 24, 2023, the Finals of “National Disruptive Technology Innovation Competition 2022” , sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and organized by Torch High-Tech Center of MOST,concluded in Hangzhou. The “non-viral vector-based genetically modified TIL therapy” of Juncell Therapeutics won the highest award thanks to its disruptive innovative features, and was included in MOST’s database of candidate disruptive technologies.      

Several genetically modified TIL therapies of Juncell Therapeutics are currently under clinical studies. On the basis of the advantages of natural TIL therapy requiring no lymphodepletion or IL-2 injection, the genetically modified TILs mediated by non-viral vector can further enhance their adaptability and restructuring ability in the tumor micro-environment, thus improving the therapeutic potential against refractory tumors.

The non-viral vector can eliminate the potential biosafety risks of viral vectors and significantly reduce the production cost (less than 1/10 of the system based on viral vectors). To tackle the key problems of the existing non-viral vector-based system, including low transfection rate of primary T cells (less than 10%) and insufficient cell viability after transfection, technical breakthroughs have been made to significantly improve the efficiency of transfecting exogenous genes into TILs (average positive rate > 30%) and viability of TILs after electrotransfection (> 90%, with the cell count of TILs reaching 1 billion).

The genetically modified TIL therapy GC203 showed excellent safety and efficacy in patients with relapsed/refractory solid tumors; 5 last-line patients had varying levels of tumor shrinkage with sustained response.