Made-Inside-Body CAR T Cells Clear Mouse Leukemia
Azalea's preclinical in vivo platform still needs human trials before it could reach patients.
Updated on Nov. 6, 2026 in Biotech
Berkeley, California-based Azalea Therapeutics presented preclinical data on its in vivo TRAC-CAR T cell platform at the SITC 2026 Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. The work is research-stage: the results come from mouse and non-human primate studies and have not been tested in humans.
Why it matters
The platform aims to make CAR T cells inside the body rather than manufacturing them ex vivo, a shift that could remove the need for patients' cells to be collected and engineered in a lab. The reported results extend a field that is moving toward simpler, in vivo delivery approaches.
The preclinical study reports that 99% of filtered sequencing reads mapped to the intended TRAC locus, indicating precise insertion of the CAR gene. In non-human primates, CAR T cells reached up to 41% of peripheral T cells after one intravenous dose. The safety and durability of these effects in humans have not yet been reported.
The players
Azalea Therapeutics
A Berkeley, California biotechnology company developing in vivo TRAC-CAR T cell platforms that generate CAR T cells directly inside the body.
SITC 2026 Annual Meeting
The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer's annual scientific meeting, held in Phoenix, Arizona, where the preclinical data were presented.
Connor Tsuchida
The presenter of abstract 950 at SITC 2026 on Azalea Therapeutics' in vivo TRAC-CAR T cell platform.
The details
The platform packages two delivery vehicles: T cell-targeted enveloped delivery vehicles (EDVs) carry transient CRISPR-Cas9 editing complexes, and T cell-tropic adeno-associated viruses (AAV) carry a CAR gene that lacks its own promoter. The CRISPR-Cas9 complex cuts the TRAC locus, the gene region for the T cell receptor, so the CAR gene is inserted there and expressed under the T cell's own promoter. In humanized mouse models, a single intravenous dose generated these cells and cleared CD19-positive leukemia, with the company also reporting dual CD19/CD20-targeted cells.
Timeline
SITC 2026 Annual Meeting ran November 4-8, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona.
Abstract 950 was presented Saturday, November 7, 2026.
The ePoster became available on the SITC virtual meeting platform Friday, November 6, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. ET.
Secondary tumor challenge in mice occurred about 60 days after initial treatment.
The Tech Race
Current CAR T therapies depend on collecting, engineering and reinfusing a patient's own T cells, an ex vivo process that adds time and cost. Azalea's in vivo TRAC-CAR platform is one of several efforts to generate CAR T cells inside the body, and the preclinical data it presented remain at the mouse and primate stage.
The platform is at the preclinical stage and is not available to patients. Any path to clinical use would require human trials that have not been announced in the source material.
The takeaway
Watch for Azalea Therapeutics to report human trial plans or first-in-human data, which would be the decisive test of whether in vivo TRAC-CAR cells can match ex vivo results. Those results would indicate whether the approach moves from mice and primates to clinical use.
Further reading
For more on the research behind this work, see the Biotech section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by The Manila times.
