Transgene announced it has received approval from the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products to proceed with a Phase I/IIa study of the novel oncolytic Vaccinia virus BT-001. This announcement follows the approval received in December 2020 from the Belgian health authorities. The first patient is expected to be enrolled in this trial in the upcoming weeks. BT-001 is based on the patented Invir.IO™ oncolytic virus, and has been engineered to encode both a Treg-depleting human recombinant anti-CTLA4 antibody generated by BioInvent’s proprietary n-CoDeR/F.I.R.S.T™ platforms, and the human GM-CSF cytokine. By selectively targeting the tumor microenvironment, BT-001 is expected to elicit a much stronger and more effective antitumoral response and greatly increase the safety and tolerability profile of the anti-CTLA4 antibody. BT-001 is being co-developed through a 50/50 collaboration between Transgene and BioInvent.