GC Cell's CD5 CAR-NK therapy draws responses in five of eight patients

GC Cell presented interim results from the Phase 1a trial of GCC2005 at ICBMT 2026, the international congress on blood and marrow transplantation held in Busan, according to Korea Biomedical Review on 21 September 2026. GCC2005 is an allogeneic CAR-NK therapy: natural killer cells from a donor, engineered to recognise the CD5 protein on malignant T cells, given to patients with relapsed or refractory T-cell lymphoma.

Nine patients were enrolled and eight could be evaluated. The objective response rate was 62.5%, with three complete and two partial responses. One patient with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma reached a complete response on a low dose and has held it for 18 months. No case of ICANS, the neurotoxicity that can follow engineered cell therapies, and no graft-versus-host disease were reported.

The data update an earlier compassionate-use report on the same product. Dosing in the domestic Phase 1a is complete, and GC Cell is preparing a Phase 1b portion before a global registrational study. The figures come from a conference presentation, not a peer-reviewed publication.