BioAtla, LLC announced the treatment of the first patient in its clinical trial BA3011-001 for BioAtla's BA3011, a novel conditionally active AXL-targeted antibody-drug conjugate (CAB-AXL-ADC). This is a multi-center, open-label, Phase 1/2 study designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, immunogenicity and antitumor activity of BA3011 in patients with advanced solid tumors including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), castration resistant prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer. CAB-AXL-ADC is BioAtla's first CAB investigational product to enter clinical trials. The AXL receptor tyrosine kinase is often highly expressed in several cancer types that can lead to poor prognosis. A principal role of AXL appears to be in sustaining a major mechanism of resistance to diverse anticancer therapies. In addition, AXL is a factor in the repression of the innate immune response which may also limit response to treatment including immuno-oncology (IO) therapy. While this makes the AXL receptor an attractive target for tumor therapy, the AXL receptor is also prevalent in normal tissue of several organs in the body. To minimize on-target off-tumor toxicity of binding to AXL receptors on normal cells, BioAtla applies its proprietary CAB technology to develop its CAB antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targeting AXL with the intent to activate binding to the AXL receptor only in the tumor microenvironment and deliver the toxic payload to the cancerous cells.