TScan Therapeutics is laying off 30% of its workforce as the T-cell receptor (TCR) therapy biotech abandons a phase 1 solid tumor trial and focuses on patients with blood cancers.
The company had already dosed the first two patients with solid tumors in a phase 1 trial of its multiplex TCR-engineered T-cell therapy but said it has now decided to halt enrollment. The biotech will continue to explore treating solid tumors, but only through its preclinical work on in vivo-engineered TCR-Ts, it explained in a Nov. 3 update.
TScan’s priority now will be its clinical-stage program for hematological malignancies. The biotech has already been evaluating its lead TCR-engineered T-cell therapy, dubbed TSC-101, in a phase 1 study in patients with acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes.
The company recently held a “productive” end-of-phase 1 meeting with the FDA to agree on a path forward for TSC-101, and the biotech is now looking at launching a pivotal trial in these indications in the second quarter of 2026.
As a result of this morning’s strategic pivot, TScan is waving goodbye to 66 employees—equivalent to 30% of its workforce.
TScan also used this morning’s release to explain that it has retooled its manufacturing process for TSC-101 after noting that some patients in the phase 1 blood cancer study had experienced “instances of relapse or prolonged incomplete chimerism.” TScan attributed these cases to “products that had higher levels of T cell expansion in the manufacturing process” and said it has updated the process to reduce the time taken to manufacture the therapy from 17 to 12 days. This process also requires less T-cell expansion, TScan said.
“We are encouraged by the positive feedback from the FDA on our heme program and our pivotal trial design for TSC-101,” TScan CEO Gavin MacBeath, Ph.D., said in a Nov. 3 release.
“In preparation for the pivotal study, we developed a commercial-ready manufacturing process that shortens the manufacturing time by five days,” MacBeath explained. “This results in substantially lower cost of goods and reduces the need for high levels of ex vivo T cell expansion that we believe may be associated with decreased T cell activity in patients.
“The strength of our long-term data, together with our improved commercial-ready manufacturing process, validates our decision to focus resources on the heme program,” the CEO added.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company ended June with $218 million in the bank. Today’s restructuring is expected to bring the biotech annualized cost savings of $45 million in 2026 and 2027, extending TScan’s cash runway from the first quarter of 2027 into the second half of that year.
This summer saw Big Pharmas back away from their TCR therapy commitments, with both AstraZeneca and Roche’s Genentech ending work on assets they had once paid nine figures for.