Xenetic Biosciences partner cleared for Israeli CAR T-cell combination study

Xenetic Biosciences (NASDAQ:XBIO) announced today that its collaboration partner, PeriNess, has received formal approval from the Israeli Ministry of Health and the relevant Institutional Review Board to initiate an exploratory clinical study.

The trial will evaluate the use of systemic recombinant human DNase I as an adjunctive treatment alongside anti-CD19 CAR T-cell therapy for patients with large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL).

The study, which will be conducted at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center under the leadership of principal investigator Dr. Ron Ram, is set to enroll 12 patients presenting with stable or progressive disease.

Under the approved protocol, participants will receive standard CAR T-cell treatments—such as tisagenlecleucel, axicabtagene ciloleucel, or lisocabtagene maraleucel—supplemented by a series of intravenous DNase I infusions.

The trial is designed to measure several key clinical indicators, including objective response rates (ORR) at one and three months post-infusion, duration of response, disease control, and overall survival rates at 12 months.

This clinical advancement follows positive preclinical data that Xenetic presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

Those findings demonstrated that DNase I can significantly enhance CAR T-cell expansion, persistence, and functionality by degrading neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) and extracellular DNA, which are known to contribute to T-cell exhaustion and therapeutic resistance in the tumor microenvironment.