Why the world just gave its highest biotech honor to the inventor of TIL therapy

A Tang Prize often called the Nobel predictor just recognized the science behind a new generation of cancer cell therapy.

On June 16th, the Tang Prize, often described as a predictor of future Nobel Prizes, was awarded to three scientists for developing TIL and CAR-T cell therapy. Past Tang Prize winners include Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who went on to win the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the same work, and James Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

One of this year’s winners is Steven Rosenberg, often called the father of cancer immunotherapy. If you’ve been following TIL therapy developments, his name is the reason any of this exists.

Starting in the 1970s, Rosenberg built the entire research framework for using a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer. In the 1980s he showed that IL-2 could activate T cells and make them more effective cancer fighters, leading to one of the first FDA-approved immunotherapies. Then he demonstrated that TIL, immune cells extracted directly from a patient’s tumor, could make metastatic melanoma regress. In the 1990s, he achieved the first regulatory approval for introducing foreign genes into the human body, laying the groundwork for everything that came after, including CAR-T.

It took decades to get from that early science to something patients could actually use. In February 2024, the FDA approved the first TIL therapy for solid tumors, Iovance’s lifileucel, for advanced melanoma. It worked. A 31.4% response rate and median survival of nearly 14 months in patients who had already failed standard treatment. But it came with a real cost. Patients needed high-intensity chemotherapy to prepare their immune system and repeated high doses of IL-2, both of which carry significant toxicity and typically require ICU-level care.

That gap between efficacy and safety is exactly what the next generation of TIL therapy has been trying to close.

GC101, developed by Juncell Therapeutics in Shanghai, is the first TIL therapy in the world that requires neither the high-intensity conditioning chemotherapy nor the IL-2 injections. According to data presented at ASCO 2026, its Phase II trial for melanoma, MIZAR-003, met its primary endpoint. Median progression-free survival was 4.3 months versus 1.6 months for chemotherapy, a 57% reduction in the risk of progression or death. Objective response rate was 42.0% versus 6.1% for the control group. Some patients who initially had a partial response later converted to complete response, meaning their cancer became undetectable.

Juncell is expected to file for melanoma approval in China this year.

They’re not the only company working in this space. Hesper Bio’s FAST-TIL therapy uses a shortened 14-day manufacturing process and lower IL-2 dependence, with its own Phase II melanoma trial starting this May. Shali Bio’s GT201 showed a 55.6% objective response rate across nine patients with advanced solid tumors at ASCO 2025, with particularly strong results in head and neck cancer and NSCLC. Iovance has expanded lifileucel’s development beyond melanoma into endometrial cancer, NSCLC, and sarcoma, with lung cancer data expected to complete enrollment this year.

What all of this adds up to is a fairly fast-moving field. Five years ago, TIL therapy for solid tumors barely existed outside research institutions. Now there are multiple companies racing toward approval, each trying to solve the same core problem Rosenberg identified decades ago: how do you harness a patient’s own immune system against a tumor it’s already failed to control.

The Tang Prize recognition isn’t just a nod to the past. It’s a signal that the scientific community sees this approach as having reached a turning point, not as a finished story.

For patients with advanced solid tumors who have run out of standard treatment options, that turning point is already accessible in some cases. GC101 is currently available to international patients through Hainan’s regulated medical zone in China, ahead of formal approval elsewhere.

I write about TIL therapy and advanced cancer treatment options at CancerPath. If you’d like to understand whether this could be relevant for a specific situation, you can find more information at CancerPath.

Sources: Tang Prize Foundation, 2026. ASCO 2026 presentations. Individual results vary.