Alpha Tau Announces New Research Collaboration to Study the Potential of Alpha DaRT to Enhance Immune Stimulation in the Treatment of Breast Cancer

JERUSALEM, Jan. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Alpha Tau Medical Ltd. (“Alpha Tau”), the developer of the innovative alpha-radiation cancer therapy Alpha DaRT™, announced today that it has signed a sponsored research agreement with investigators at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (“MD Anderson”) to evaluate potential immune stimulation by combining Alpha DaRT™ with DNA-repair inhibitors and immune checkpoint inhibitors for the treatment of breast tumors.

The study will be led by Gabriel Sawakuchi, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Radiation Physics, and Simona Shaitelman, M.D., Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson, together with Alpha Tau’s translational research and physics teams. The research will focus on the mechanism of alpha radiation, with its higher relative efficiency in killing cancer cells, in comparison to traditional radiation modalities such as protons and photons, to assess any potential synergy in providing immune stimulation for enhanced destruction of breast cancer cells. The investigators will examine whether such a synergy exists between Alpha DaRT, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and biological treatments that inhibit DNA repair in a pre-clinical setting.

Alpha Tau CTO Ronen Segal said, “This is an extremely exciting collaboration for Alpha Tau. We are delighted to work with such an extraordinary team to examine a very promising hypothesis: that Alpha DaRT may be uniquely well-suited to treat what has been a particularly deadly and intractable form of cancer.”

About Alpha DaRT
Alpha DaRT (Diffusing Alpha-emitters Radiation Therapy) is designed to enable highly potent and conformal alpha-irradiation of solid tumors by intratumoral delivery of radium-224 impregnated sources. When the radium decays, its short-lived daughters are released from the source and disperse while emitting high-energy alpha particles with the goal of destroying the tumor. Since the alpha-emitting atoms diffuse only a short distance, Alpha DaRT aims to mainly affect the tumor, and to spare the healthy tissue around it.

About Alpha Tau Medical Ltd.
Founded in 2016, Alpha Tau is an Israeli medical device company that focuses on research, development, and potential commercialization of the Alpha DaRT for the treatment of solid tumors. The technology was initially developed by Prof. Itzhak Kelson and Prof. Yona Keisari from Tel Aviv University.

On July 8, 2021, Alpha Tau announced that it had entered into a definitive merger agreement (the “Merger Agreement”) with Healthcare Capital Corp. (NASDAQ: HCCC) (“HCCC“), a special purpose acquisition company, pursuant to which Alpha Tau would consummate a business combination transaction (the “Business Combination”) with HCCC and become a Nasdaq-listed public company.