Leading experts in lung cancer treatment are joining Penetrium Bioscience’s Phase 2a clinical trial for solid tumors in the U.S.
Penetrium Bioscience announced on Tuesday that Professor Marina Chiara Garassino from the University of Chicago has agreed to participate in their clinical trial, following the PENETRIUM Global Clinical Development Symposium 2026 held in Seoul the previous day.
According to the company, Professor Garassino expressed her intention to join the trial after attentively listening to a comprehensive presentation on Penetrium’s mechanism of action, the concept of pseudo-resistance, patient-derived organoid and animal model preclinical results, and the global clinical development strategy for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Phase 2a trial.
Professor Garassino is a world-renowned authority who served as the principal investigator for the KEYNOTE-189 global clinical trial, which revolutionized the lung cancer treatment paradigm with immunotherapy combination therapy.
Penetrium identifies the causes of resistance to existing cancer therapies not only in the genetic mutations of cancer cells but also in the tumor microenvironment (TME) surrounding the cancer.
The company defines pseudo-resistance as the phenomenon where cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and the extracellular matrix (ECM) create barriers that prevent chemotherapy drugs and immune cells from effectively reaching cancer cells.
Currently, a clinical trial for prostate cancer is underway in South Korea, while in the U.S., the company is preparing for the next steps following FDA approval for Phase 2 trials.
At the symposium, the company presented research results on patient-derived organoids for lung cancer using the latest RAS-targeted therapy, daraxonrasib.
The study revealed that when the survival activity of untreated cancer cells was set at 100%, administering daraxonrasib alone reduced the survival activity to 57.8%. However, when CAFs were present in the surrounding cancer tissue, the survival activity of the cancer cells increased to 89.6% even after the same daraxonrasib treatment.
The research team then added Penetrium’s treatment, which Targets pseudo-resistance, without changing the targeted therapy. As a result, the survival activity of the cancer cells plummeted to 7.5%.
This data demonstrates that pseudo-resistance caused by stromal barriers in the tumor microenvironment, rather than genetic mutations of the cancer cells themselves, is the underlying reason for treatment failure.
The company reported that in addition to Professor Garassino, Professor Brian Henick, head of the early clinical program at Columbia University’s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, also expressed interest in participating in the U.S. clinical trials.
Cho Won-dong, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Penetrium Bioscience, stated that the willingness of world-class cancer clinical experts to voluntarily participate reflects their deep agreement with the mechanism-centered treatment strategy. This approach emphasizes that simply attacking cancer cells cannot break the ceiling of cancer treatment; it must also dismantle the barriers of pseudo-resistance.
He emphasized that as this innovative paradigm that began in South Korea establishes itself as a new trend in modern oncology, it will prove its great potential on the actual patient validation stage alongside world-class clinical experts.
