This week, we chat with Pan Cancer T CEO Dr. Rachel Abbott, about – among other things – triple-negative breast cancer. and we also have a conversation that considers the big picture of drug development, as we not only talk to Erik Manting, CEO of the immunotherapy company Mendus, but also Janet Hoogstraate, CEO of the CDMO helping them get where they want to be, North X Biologics.
Interview times:
03:56 Pan Cancer T
20:23 Mendus/NorthX Biologics
Mendus
Mendus is a Swedish–Dutch immuno-oncology company developing cell-based therapies aimed at stopping cancers from coming back rather than treating only the initial tumour burden. Its lead product, vididencel, is an off‑the‑shelf dendritic cell vaccine being developed as a post‑remission therapy for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), and more recently chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), who remain at high risk of relapse after standard treatment. The company’s broader pipeline explores how active immunotherapies could extend treatment‑free survival across different myeloid malignancies.
Over the past year Mendus has refined its late‑stage clinical strategy for vididencel on the back of positive data from the phase 2a ADVANCE II trial in high‑risk AML, where long‑term follow‑up has shown durable remissions and an encouraging safety profile. Vididencel is also being studied in the randomized phase 2b AMLM22‑CADENCE trial in combination with oral azacitidine, aimed at broadening its use beyond patients with measurable residual disease.
NorthX Biologics
North X Biologics sits on the other side of the advanced therapies ecosystem, operating as a contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) and national innovation hub for complex biologics in Sweden. The company provides GMP‑grade development and manufacturing services for plasmid DNA, recombinant proteins, viral vectors, and cell and gene therapies from its facilities in Matfors and on the Karolinska University Hospital campus in Stockholm. Its goal is to give emerging biotechs and academic groups access to infrastructure and regulatory expertise that would be hard to build alone.
NorthX has expanded into cell therapy manufacturing, adding capabilities for multiple cell types, including pluripotent stem cells. This expansion includes new process‑development and GMP suites designed to help clients translate early research into first‑in‑human and late‑stage clinical programmes. The organisation works with both domestic and international partners, aiming to strengthen Sweden’s role as a European centre for advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs).
An example of this model is NorthX’s collaboration with Mendus, where the two companies have worked together since 2023 to establish scalable manufacturing for vididencel. In late 2025, they announced successful GMP manufacturing certification for vididencel at NorthX’s facilities, a milestone that supports Mendus’ upcoming late‑stage clinical trials and eventual commercial supply.
Pan Cancer T
Pan Cancer T brings a different angle to cancer immunotherapy, focusing on engineered T cell receptor (TCR‑T) therapies for hard‑to‑treat solid tumours.
Based in Rotterdam and spun out from Erasmus MC in 2020, the company is building a pipeline around tumour‑specific antigens that are consistently and strongly expressed across multiple cancers. Its lead programme, PCT1:CO‑STIM, is being developed for women with triple‑negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of the disease with limited treatment options and poor survival once it has spread.
The company’s approach combines two main innovations: carefully selected targets such as ROPN1, which is reported to be present in more than 90% of TNBC and melanoma cases, and proprietary co‑stimulatory technology designed to make engineered T cells more durable and effective in the hostile tumour micro‑environment. By focusing on shared antigens across different tumour types, Pan Cancer T aims to develop treatments that could, in time, be applied beyond breast cancer to other solid tumours including melanoma and cancers of the skin, colorectum, stomach, oesophagus, ovary and uterus.
In December 2025, Pan Cancer T announced a €10m financing package to move PCT1:CO‑STIM into its first‑in‑human clinical trial. The funding will support regulatory preparations and early clinical testing at leading cancer centres in the Netherlands, marking the company’s transition from preclinical validation to treating patients with its first TCR‑T therapy.
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