Novel Nanoparticle May Improve SOC in Stage III Unresectable NSCLC

In a conversation with CancerNetwork^®, Benjamin Cooper, MD, highlighted the clinical implications of findings from the phase 2 CONVERGE trial (NCT06667908) assessing investigational radioenhancer JNJ-1900 among patients with stage III unresectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Findings that Cooper and colleagues presented in a poster session at the 2026 European Lung Cancer Congress revealed that treatment with JNJ-1900 was feasible and safe when administered with chemoradiotherapy and immunotherapy in a small population of patients.

According to Cooper, JNJ-1900 represents an opportunity to improve upon a standard of care that has seen limited progress within the last decade. He noted how the investigational agent may avoid certain limitations associated with other classes of agents like radioprotectors and radiosensitizers based on its intratumoral delivery and ability to produce an exclusively local effect in the tumor.

Cooper is an associate professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, site director of Radiation Oncology at PCC 34th campus, and director of Proton Therapy Services Radiation Oncology.

Transcript:

I would love for more centers to try to get this [treatment] open at their institution. It’s a fantastic opportunity to try to improve a standard of care that hasn’t budged much in the last decade or so. It’s unique in that this is a radiosensitizer that is injected intratumorally. There’s been a long history of either radiosensitizers, which make the radiation work better, or radioprotectors, which protect the normal tissues. But one of the main limitations for both strategies has been that most things that sensitize the radiation in the tumor also sensitize the radiation in the normal tissue. Patients would have increased [adverse] effects. Conversely, radioprotectors, things that would make the radiation hurt the organs at risk less, would sometimes make it so the tumors were controlled less. [JNJ-1900] has the advantage of being directed into the tumor with only a local effect in the tumor, and we may have an opportunity to use these radiosensitizers in NSCLC as well as other diseases.

Reference

Cooper BT, Bradley JD, Patel S, et al. Novel intratumoral radioenhancer (JNJ-1900) with chemoradiation and consolidative immunotherapy for stage III unresectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): early outcomes from the phase II CONVERGE study. Presented at the 2026 European Lung Cancer Congress; March 25-28, 2026; Copenhagen, Denmark. Abstract 297P.