“We are delighted to establish this discovery partnership with Penn as a first step towards evaluating the impact of innovative viral immunotherapies in combination with CAR-T cells with the aim of modulating the tumor microenvironment in such a way that CAR-T cells can get into the solid tumor, stay functional, and eliminate tumor cells. Our HSV constructs, based on the enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform, permit precise tuning of important viral properties and, with a large payload capacity, enable multimodal approaches to fight cancer,” said Paul Peter Tak, MD, PhD, FMedSci, President and Chief Executive Officer of Candel Therapeutics. “We look forward to testing these important new combination strategies in collaboration with Penn.”