Acepodia doses first patient in Phase 1 trial of dual-payload ADC ACE723 for liver cancer

What's the deal? Acepodia, a clinical-stage biotech developing cell therapies and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs — precision cancer medicines that attach a cell-killing drug to an antibody which homes in on tumour cells), announced on 5 November 2026 that the first patient has been dosed in its Phase 1 trial of ACE723. The trial is for people with unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer, and the first dose was given at a clinical site in China.

Why it matters: ACE723 is the first candidate from Acepodia's Antibody-Dual-Drugs Conjugation (AD2C) platform to reach human testing. It targets GPC3, a protein found on the surface of most HCC tumour cells, and carries two different cancer-killing payloads designed to attack the tumour through distinct mechanisms — an approach intended to overcome the tumour variation and drug resistance that limit conventional single-payload ADCs. The drug received clearance to start trials from the US FDA and China's NMPA in September 2026 and from Taiwan's TFDA in October 2026. Many patients with advanced liver cancer eventually progress on existing immunotherapy combinations and have few options, so therapies with new mechanisms of action are an unmet need.

Read more: PR Newswire, 5 November 2026