On April 15, 2026 Verismo Therapeutics, a clinical-stage CAR T cell therapy company pioneering a novel multi-chain KIR-CAR platform technology, reported a $28 million investment from its parent company, HLB Innovation (KOSDAQ: 024850). The investment comes ahead of a significant clinical milestone: the first-ever presentation of KIR-CAR clinical data, which will be featured in the Late-Breaking Clinical Trials plenary session at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting 2026 in San Diego, CA, on April 20, 2026.
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The funding will support ongoing Phase 1 clinical trials of Verismo’s two KIR-CAR programs currently in the clinic: SynKIR-110 in patients with advanced mesothelin-expressing solid tumors (STAR-101, NCT05568680) and SynKIR-310 in patients with relapsed/refractory B cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (CELESTIAL-301, NCT06544265).
Selection for an AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) Late-Breaking Clinical Trials plenary session is among the most prestigious distinctions in oncology research. The upcoming STAR-101 presentation marks Verismo’s first-ever presentation of clinical data on a KIR-CAR candidate.
"This investment from HLB Innovation comes at a pivotal moment for Verismo and for the KIR-CAR platform," said Bryan Kim, CEO and Co-Founder of Verismo Therapeutics. "This funding ensures we have the resources to fully capitalize on that momentum — advancing our solid tumor and blood cancer programs toward the data readouts that will define the potential for multi-chain KIR-CAR cell therapy to provide durable results over current single-chain CAR Ts."
The following data readouts will be presented at the upcoming AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) 2026, reflecting the breadth of Verismo’s novel KIR-CAR platform:
Late-Breaking Clinical Trials Plenary Session — April 20, 2026: Initial results of a first-in-human dose-escalation study of KIR-CAR in patients with advanced mesothelin-expressing solid tumors
Poster Presentation — April 21, 2026: Novel SynKIR-310 outperforms CD3-based second-generation CD28 or 41BB co-stimulated CAR T in B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma xenograft mice and shows early clinical signal
Late-Breaking Poster Presentation — April 20, 2026: Natural killer cell-based signaling in EGFR-targeted KIR-CAR T overcomes CD3-based CAR T functional deficits to eliminate resistant glioblastomas in vivo
(Press release, Verismo Therapeutics, APR 15, 2026, View Source [SID1234664411])