People living in a village were left without water for five hours after a pipe burst.
The main failed at about 06:40 BST, impacting about 150 households in The Street, Pump Lane, Mill Hill and Howe Green Road, in Purleigh, near Chelmsford and Maldon, Essex.
Essex and Suffolk Water installed a temporary overland pipe “to get water flowing again” while repairs were carried out, before “most supplies” were restored around midday.
A spokesperson said: “It may take a little time for the pressure to build up in our network. If your water is discoloured, please run your cold kitchen tap for up to 40 mins or until clear. Thanks for your patience.”
Prior to carrying out work in the village, the water firm’s engineers informed residents about the issue and installed a road closure at Lodge Lane.
At the time they apologised for “any inconvenience” caused and assured homeowners they were “doing everything” they could “to get things back to normal” as quickly as possible.
The phase 3 ASTRUM-006 trial examining serplulimab (Hansizhuang) plus chemotherapy as neoadjuvant/adjuvant monotherapy treatment in patients with gastric cancer met its primary end point of event-free survival (EFS), according to an announcement from Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Inc.1
Additional data from the interim analysis conducted by an independent data monitoring committee (IDMC) showed that serplulimab plus chemotherapy elicited a pathologic complete response (pCR) rate that was threefold higher than that achieved with placebo plus chemotherapy and also significantly reduced the risk of recurrence. The combination was noted to have an acceptable toxicity profile, with no new safety signals reported.
Based on these findings, the IDMC has recommended early submission of a new drug application for serplulimab.
“Surgery is the cornerstone of gastric cancer treatment, and perioperative therapy is critical to long-term survival,” Professor Jiafu Ji, of Beijing Cancer Hospital, stated in a news release. “This study is the first to confirm the feasibility of replacing adjuvant chemotherapy with mono-immunotherapy in the postoperative setting. It not only opens a new path to consolidate surgical outcomes and reduce recurrence risk but also paves the way for innovation in clinical practice.”
What Data Have Previously Been Reported With Serplulimab in Gastric Cancer?
Data from a study shared at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting indicated that when perioperatively serplulimab was given at a dose of 300 mg on day 1 every 3 weeks (Q3W) combined with chemotherapy comprised of oxaliplatin at 130 mg/m2 on day 1 and S-1 at 60 mg twice daily on days 1 to 14 Q3W for 3 cycles, 5 of 25 patients achieved a pCR; the major pathologic response rate was 40%.2 The median DFS and overall survival (OS) was not reached.
The treatment-related adverse effects (TRAEs) that were most commonly experienced with the regimen were nausea, anorexia, thrombocytopenia, fatigue, and thyroid dysfunction. No TRAEs were grade 3 or higher in severity. The study authors concluded that the findings supported a place for immune-based neoadjuvant therapy in this setting.
Is Serplulimab Under Exploration in Other Cancers?
The randomized, double-blind, phase 3 ASTRUM-005 study (NCT04063163) randomized patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer to serplulimab at 4.5 mg/kg on day 1 plus carboplatin at an area under the curve of 5 on day 1 and 100 mg/m2 of etoposide on days 1 to 3 Q3W for up to 4 cycles followed by maintenance serplulimab at 4.5 mg/kg Q3W or placebo plus the same chemotherapy regimen.3
Data shared during the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting showed that those who received serplulimab (n = 389) experienced a median OS of 15.8 months (95% CI, 13.9-17.4) compared with 11.1 months (95% CI, 10.0-12.4) with placebo (n = 196), translating to a 40% reduction in the risk of death (HR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.49-0.73; descriptive P < .001). The OS rates in the respective arms at 4 years were 21.9% (95% CI, 17.6%-26.6%) and 7.2% (95% CI, 3.8%-12.1%). The median progression-free survival with serplulimab was 5.8 months (95% CI, 5.6-6.9) vs 4.3 months (95% CI, 4.2-4.4), translating to a 53% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death (HR, 0.47; 95% CI, 0.38-0.57; descriptive P < .001).
Serplulimab plus chemotherapy elicited a confirmed objective response rate (ORR) of 68.9% (95% CI, 64.0%-73.5%), with a median duration of response (DOR) of 6.8 months (95% CI, 5.5-7.9). In the placebo arm, the confirmed ORR was 58.7% (95% CI, 51.4%-65.6%) and the median DOR was 4.2 months (95% CI, 3.1-4.2; HR for DOR was 0.45; 95% CI, 0.35-0.58; descriptive P < .001).
In June 2025, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency of the United Kingdom approved serplulimab (Hetronifly) for use in adult patients with previously untreated, metastatic ES-SCLC.4 In February 2025, the European Commission cleared serplulimab plus carboplatin and etoposide for frontline use in adult patients with ES-SCLC.5
Serplulimab plus carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) is also being evaluated in patients with previously untreated locally advanced or metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer. Data from the final analysis of the phase 3 ASTRUM-004 trial (NCT04033354) indicated that the serplulimab combination significantly improved OS vs placebo plus chemotherapy (HR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.58-0.93; P = .010).6 At the second interim analysis, the PFS benefit provided by serplulimab plus chemotherapy vs the control was maintained (HR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.42-0.67).
References
Phase 3 clinical trial of HANSIZHUANG plus chemotherapy meets primary endpoint in neoadjuvant/adjuvant gastric cancer, greenlighting early NDA submission. News release. Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Inc. October 9, 2025. Accessed October 9, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/phase-3-clinical-trial-of-hansizhuang-plus-chemotherapy-meets-primary-endpoint-in-neoadjuvantadjuvant-gastric-cancer-greenlighting-early-nda-submission-302579744.html
Zhan H, Liu L, Sun W, et al. Neoadjuvant serplulimab in combination with chemotherapy for locally advanced gastric or gastro-esophageal junction cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2025;43(suppl 16):4030. doi:10.1200/JCO.2025.43.16_suppl.4030
The numbers are nothing short of staggering. Take Sam Altman, Open AI’s CEO. He reportedly wants 250 gigawatts of new electricity—equal to about half of Europe’s all-time peak load—to run gigantic new data centers in the U.S. and elsewhere worldwide by 2033.
Building or expanding power plants to generate that much electricity on Altman’s timetable indeed seems almost inconceivable. “What OpenAI is trying to do is absolutely historic,” says Varun Sivaram, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The problem is, “there is no way today that our grids, with our power plants, can supply that energy to those projects, and it can’t possibly happen on the timescale that AI is trying to accomplish.”
Yet Sivaram believes Altman may be able to reach his goal of running multiple new data centers in a different way. Sivaram, in addition to his position at the CFR, is the founder and CEO of Emerald AI, a startup that launched in July. “I founded it directly to solve this problem,” he says—not just Altman’s problem specifically, but the larger problem of powering the data centers that all AI companies need. Several smart minds in tech like the odds of Sivaram’s company. It’s backed by Radical Ventures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm NVentures, other VCs, and heavy-hitter individuals including Google chief scientist Jeff Dean and Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr.
Emerald AI’s premise is that the electricity needed for AI data centers is largely there already. Even big new data centers would confront power shortages only occasionally. “The power grid is kind of like a superhighway that faces peak rush hour just a few hours per month,” Sivaram says. Similarly, in most places today the existing grid could handle a data center easily except in a few times of extreme demand.
Sivaram’s objective is to solve the problem of those rare high-demand moments the grid can’t handle. It isn’t all that difficult, at least in theory, he argues. Some jobs can be paused or slowed, he explains, like the training or fine-tuning of a large language model for academic research. Other jobs, like queries for an AI service used by millions of people, can’t be rescheduled but could be redirected to another data center where the local power grid is less stressed. Data centers would need to be flexible in this way less than 2% of the time, he says; Emerald AI is intended to help them do it by turning the theory to real-world action. The result, Sivaram says, would be profound: “If all AI data centers ran this way, we could achieve Sam Altman’s global goal today.”
A paper by Duke University scholars, published in February, reported a test of the concept and found it worked. Separately, Emerald AI and Oracle tried the concept on a hot day in Phoenix and found they could reduce power consumption in a way that didn’t degrade AI computation—“kind of having your cake and eating it too,” Sivaram says. That paper is under peer review.
No one knows if Altman’s 250-gigawatt plan will prove to be brilliant or folly. In these early days, Emerald AI’s future can’t be divined, as promising as it seems. What we know for sure is that great challenges bring forth unimagined innovations—and in the AI era, we should brace for plenty of them.
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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
MKS Instruments, a supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, is selling a $1bn speciality chemicals division in a bid to focus its operations on supplying chipmakers, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Massachusetts-based technology group, which specialises in advanced manufacturing equipment crucial to the semiconductor supply chain, is working with advisers to divest the division, which it acquired as part of its $5.1bn takeover of Atotech in 2021.
The unit, which generates about $100mn in adjusted earnings a year, focuses on supplying technology used to apply coatings and finishes to automobiles and industrial equipment. MKS will hold on to the remainder of the division that provides equipment used to produce semiconductors and circuit boards.
MKS is trying to sell investors on how the boom in artificial intelligence and other technologies will drive a surge in demand for its manufacturing instruments, which it says are essential to the next wave of innovation. The company supplies semiconductor giants such as TSMC, Applied Materials and Lam Research.
Both its semiconductor and electronics divisions delivered revenue growth above analyst projections in the most recent quarter.
John Lee, MKS chief executive, said on an earnings call in August that the double-digit growth in its electronics and packaging arm was “validating MKS’s position in a market where complex electronics applications like AI are driving growth”.
MKS declined to comment. Shares in MKS stood at $121.3 each at Friday’s close, up 14.4 per cent this year, giving it a market value of $8.3bn.
A wide array of strategic buyers and private equity groups had been approached as part of the auction, the people said. The sale process was at an advanced stage, but there were no guarantees that a deal will be clinched, they added.
Private equity groups have jumped on similar carve-outs in recent weeks. This month, Carlyle struck a €7.7bn deal to take control of BASF’s coating unit, as part of which the German chemicals giant will retain a minority stake.
Before MKS struck a deal to buy Atotech, Carlyle owned 79 per cent of the outstanding shares.
Intel’s future has never seemed so uncertain. But most of the company’s roller-coaster ride of a year has been a lead-up to its next-gen CPU launch, announced this week. The chips will be known as Intel Core Ultra Series 3, codenamed Panther Lake, and they’re being manufactured in its new Arizona-based fabrication plant.
Intel claims the first configurations will ship before the end of the year and then more broadly starting in January 2026. We don’t have a complete lineup yet, but Panther Lake will include up to 16-core CPUs with a “more than 50 percent faster CPU” performance over the previous generation. Intel claims that the new integrated GPU with have up to 12 GPU cores that are also 50 percent faster than the prior generation, boosted by a new architecture.
Intel is fighting back against the stiff competition. Qualcomm dramatically entered the Windows laptop race in 2024 with its Arm-based, highly-efficient Snapdragon X chips, doubling the battery life of current Intel-powered laptops in some cases. While Intel was able to respond to the battery-life competition with its Core Ultra Series 2 V-series chips in late 2024, performance took a hit on these laptops, and the efficiency only applied to flagship, thin, and light laptops. Budget-level and high-performance laptops used a different architecture and therefore didn’t get that same bump in efficiency.
That made shopping for a laptop in 2025 even more head-scratching than normal. These next chips will attempt to fix this problem, with the company promising “Lunar Lake–level power efficiency” and “Arrow Lake–class performance.” Intel really needs to achieve that promise, because with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite having just been previewed and the Apple M5 on the way, the stakes keep rising. —Luke Larsen
Apple’s Next Hardware Launch Is Coming Soon
Tim Cook on stage during the Apple Keynote on September 9, 2025.Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
If you’re thinking, didn’t Apple just have an event? Yes, the company debuted new iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods just last month. But rumors are heating up that the company will announce more products this month, focused on iPads and MacBooks. That’s not unusual, as the company has held October events for the past few years, usually for the tablet and Mac lineups. It’s unclear whether this will be an actual event or a silent launch via press release. The company has done both in the past.
So what can you expect? The marquee announcement will revolve around the anticipated M5 chipset, which may debut inside a new MacBook Pro and the iPad Pro. The flagship tablet likely won’t look or feel too different from the prior M4 version. MacBooks are a little more up in the air on launch timing; it could be at this event or early in 2026. If they are announced, it’ll be a new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max chip. Apple has also reportedly been gearing up for a budget MacBook launch powered by an iPhone processor, but this may arrive early in 2026 instead.
Other hardware that may debut at this October event includes a new Vision Pro powered by an M4 or M5 chip with a comfier head strap, though it’s otherwise the same as the original headset. There may be a new Apple TV with a faster chipset, the new version of Siri (though this won’t come until 2026), and Wi-Fi 7 support. And we may finally see a second-gen AirTag, with a longer range.
The PlayStation 6 May Arrive in a ‘Few Years’
Sony published a video to its PlayStation YouTube Channel this week featuring Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS5, and Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president. It’s largely technical, digging into graphics technology that the two companies are jointly developing.
A year after tech firm OpenAI roiled Hollywood with the release of its Sora AI video tool, Chief Executive Sam Altman was back — with a potentially groundbreaking update.
Unlike the generic images Sora could initially create, the new program allows users to upload videos of real people and put them into AI-generated environments, complete with sound effects and dialogue.
In one video, a synthetic Michael Jackson takes a selfie video with an image of “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston. In another, a likeness of SpongeBob SquarePants speaks out from behind the White House’s Oval Office desk.
“Excited to launch Sora 2!” Altman wrote on social media platform X on Sept. 30. “Video models have come a long way; this is a tremendous research achievement.”
But the enthusiasm wasn’t shared in Hollywood, where the new AI tools have created a swift backlash. At the core of the dispute is who controls the copyrighted images and likenesses of actors and licensed characters — and how much they should be compensated for their use in AI models.
The Motion Picture Assn. trade group didn’t mince words.
“OpenAI needs to take immediate and decisive action to address this issue,” Chairman Charles Rivkin said in a statement Monday. “Well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”
By the end of the week, multiple agencies and unions, including SAG-AFTRA, chimed in with similar statements, marking a rare moment of consensus in Hollywood and putting OpenAI on the defensive.
“We’re engaging directly with studios and rightsholders, listening to feedback, and learning from how people are using Sora 2,” Varun Shetty, OpenAI’s vice president of media partnerships, said in a statement. “Many are creating original videos and excited about interacting with their favorite characters, which we see as an opportunity for rightsholders to connect with fans and share in that creativity.”
For now, the skirmish between well-capitalized OpenAI and the major Hollywood studios and agencies appears to be only just the beginning of a bruising legal fight that could shape the future of AI use in the entertainment business.
“The question is less about if the studios will try to assert themselves, but when and how,” said Anthony Glukhov, senior associate at law firm Ramo, of the clash between Silicon Valley and Hollywood over AI. “They can posture all they want; but at the end of the day, there’s going to be two titans battling it out.”
Before it became the focus of ire in the creative community, OpenAI quietly tried to make inroads into the film and TV business.
The company’s executives went on a charm offensive last year. They reached out to key players in the entertainment industry — including Walt Disney Co. — about potential areas for collaboration and trying to assuage concerns about its technology.
This year, the San Francisco-based AI startup took a more assertive approach.
Before unveiling Sora 2 to the general public, OpenAI executives had conversations with some studios and talent agencies, putting them on notice that they need to explicitly declare which pieces of intellectual property — including licensed characters — were being opted-out of having their likeness depicted on the AI platform, according to two sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment. Actors would be included in Sora 2 unless they opted out, the people said.
OpenAI disputes the claim and says that it was always the company’s intent to give actors and other public figures control over how their likeness is used.
The response was immediate.
Beverly Hills talent agency WME, which represents stars such as Michael B. Jordan and Oprah Winfrey, told OpenAI its actions were unacceptable, and that all of its clients would be opting out.
Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency also argued that their clients had the right to control and be compensated for their likenesses.
Studios, including Warner Bros., echoed the point.
“Decades of enforceable copyright law establishes that content owners do not need to ‘opt out’ to prevent infringing uses of their protected IP,” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. “As technology progresses and platforms advance, the traditional principles of copyright protection do not change.”
Unions, including SAG-AFTRA — whose members were already alarmed over the recent appearance of a fake, AI-generated composite named Tilly Norwood — also expressed alarm.
“OpenAI’s decision to honor copyright only through an ‘opt-out’ model threatens the economic foundation of our entire industry and underscores the stakes in the litigation currently working through the courts,” newly elected President Sean Astin and National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement.
The dispute underscores a clash of two very different cultures. On one side is the brash, Silicon Valley “move fast and break things” ethos, where asking for forgiveness is seen as preferable to asking for permission. On the other is Hollywood’s eternal wariness over the effect of new technology, and its desire to retain control over increasingly valuable intellectual property rights.
“The difficulty, as we’ve seen, is balancing the capabilities with the prior rights owned by other people,” said Rob Rosenberg, a partner with law firm Moses and Singer LLP and a former Showtime Networks general counsel. “That’s what was driving the entire entertainment industry bonkers.”
Amid the outcry, Sam Altman posted on his blog days after the Sora 2 launch that the company would be giving more granular controls to rights holders and is working on a way to compensate them for video generation.
OpenAI said it has guardrails to block the generation of well-known characters and a team of reviewers who are taking down material that doesn’t follow its updated policy. Rights holders can also request removal of content.
The strong pushback from the creative community could be a strategy to force OpenAI into entering licensing agreements for the content they need, legal experts said.
Existing law is clear — a copyright holder has full control over their copyrighted material, said Ray Seilie, entertainment litigator at law firm Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir.
“It’s not your job to go around and tell other people to stop using it,” he said. “If they use it, they use it at their own risk.”
Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery have previously sued AI firms MiniMax and Midjourney, accusing them of copyright infringement.
One challenge is figuring out a way that fairly compensates talent and rights holders. Several people who work within the entertainment industry ecosystem said they don’t believe a flat fee works.
“Bring monetization that is not a one size fits all,” said Dan Neely, chief executive of Chicago-based Vermillio, which works with Hollywood talent and studios and protects how their likenesses and characters are used in AI. “That’s what will move the needle for talent and studios.”
Visiting journalist Nilesh Christopher contributed to this report.
Gold prices increase in both international and local markets.
In the international bullion market, the price of gold rises by $21 per ounce, reaching $4,016.
In the local market, the price of gold per tola increases by Rs 2,100 to reach Rs 422,700.
Similarly, the price per 10 grams rises by Rs 1,800, closing at Rs 362,397.
The upward trend reflects ongoing fluctuations in global demand and market conditions.
Read: Gold prices hit record high, cross Rs425,000 mark
Earlier, Spot gold fell nearly 2% to $3,959.48 per ounce by 01:53 p.m. ET (17:53 GMT). U.S. gold futures for December delivery fell 2.4% to settle at $3,972.6.
Wu, however, immediately outlined a clear road map for Alibaba’s AI development, with a goal towards so-called artificial superintelligence (ASI) – when the firm’s Qwen open-source models and cloud services would serve as the software and computing infrastructure of the future.
In essence, Alibaba aimed to become the “world’s leading full-stack AI service provider”, he said. Alibaba owns the Post.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
The blueprint laid out in Wu’s 23-minute speech signified not just a strategic upgrade for Alibaba, but also highlighted the competition between Chinese and US tech giants for the future of artificial intelligence – a field that has drawn some of the largest investments in history, with profound economic, social and geopolitical implications.
As he spoke, Alibaba’s shares surged to a four-year high in Hong Kong, leading several banks to raise their price targets for the stock.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu Yongming. Photo: Weibo
A day later, US chipmaker Nvidia’s co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang referenced Wu’s remarks during a podcast with tech investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley, in which he underscored the importance of spending big on AI.
The AI arena has now shifted from just large language models to include upstream hardware and downstream applications, according to Kyle Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.
China was engaged in a “different AI race” from the US, and it was no longer enough to have the strongest foundational model: one must also possess the best chips, algorithms and applications across the entire AI stack to stand out in a crowded field, Chan said.
“Only in a pure ‘race to AGI’ world would the US be miles ahead, but that is probably not the world we live in,” he said, referring to artificial general intelligence – a hypothetical AI system capable of matching human performance in economically valuable tasks.
Some estimates suggested that US and Chinese tech giants would collectively spend more than US$400 billion on AI infrastructure this year – roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Romania, the world’s 39th-largest economy according to the International Monetary Fund.
That prompted some analysts to argue that the AI competition between China and the US was now being waged by “hyperscalers” – the world’s largest tech companies with major capabilities across the entire AI stack.
Both Washington and Beijing have voiced support for their respective AI industries. The Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, released in July, aimed to promote the export of “American AI” technology globally, led by Nvidia and OpenAI – the world’s most valuable company and start-up, respectively.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman. Photo: Getty Images/TNS
As part of their partnership, Nvidia is helping OpenAI establish its own “self-hosted” data centres, which the start-up previously relied on Microsoft to provide. The move could also allow OpenAI to catch up with Tesla founder Elon Musk’s xAI, which is building its own Colossus data centres in Memphis, Tennessee.
Alongside its recent deals with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Samsung Electronics, as well as the US$500 billion in pledged funding for the Stargate Project – OpenAI’s joint venture with SoftBank Group and Oracle – the start-up’s computing deals amounted to at least US$1 trillion this year.
More partnerships could be announced “in the coming months”, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a podcast on Thursday.
“To make the bet at this scale, we kind of need the whole industry, or a big chunk of the industry, to support it,” he said. “And this is from the level of electrons to model distribution and all the stuff in between, which is a lot.”
China, too, has its share of hyperscalers, but their size lags behind their US counterparts. The big three American players – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google – command about 63 per cent of the US$900 billion global cloud computing market, according to Synergy Research Group.
In China, Alibaba’s AI and cloud computing arm Alibaba Cloud holds a clear lead with 36 per cent of the market, according to research firm Omdia.
At last month’s conference, Wu announced additional AI infrastructure spending beyond the initial US$53 billion commitment unveiled earlier this year. The company hinted that these extra funds would support the company’s largest overseas data centre expansion to date, including its first hubs in Brazil, France and the Netherlands. Wu said demand overseas “far exceeded” domestic growth.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo: AFP
Despite their advances, Chinese companies remained significantly behind their US peers in terms of investment. Alibaba’s three-year spending pledge is less than what any one of the US big three hyperscalers spends in a single year.
OpenAI is currently valued at US$500 billion, while US AI model developer Anthropic saw its valuation nearly triple to US$183 billion following a funding round in September. In contrast, China’s leading start-ups, such as Moonshot AI and Z.ai, are valued at US$3.3 billion and US$5.6 billion, respectively.
That did not necessarily mean China was falling behind in AI, Princeton’s Chan said. In the US, Silicon Valley executives – including Altman – stressed the urgency of beating China to achieve AGI.
The US preoccupation with achieving AGI before China had led to an excessive focus on scaling computing resources and restricting Chinese access to advanced semiconductors, at the expense of developing the full US stack, Chan said.
“Chinese policymakers are not ‘AGI-pilled’,” he said. “I think they see AI as something like the internet that can turbocharge, if not transform, existing industries, where the focus is on diffusing the technology broadly and increasing adoption,” said Chan, adding that he did not believe AGI was imminent.
Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai, meanwhile, has stressed the importance of adoption. At an event hosted by the US podcast All-In last month, he said the winner in AI should not be defined by “who comes up with the strongest AI model”, but on “who can adopt it faster”.
“I’m not saying China technologically is winning the model war,” he said. “But in terms of the actual application and also people benefiting from AI, it has made a lot of developments.”
The Chinese government is betting on the integration of AI with the country’s formidable industrial and manufacturing sectors to win the tech race, a strategy known as “AI plus”.
A Unitree robot takes part in an obstacle race at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. Photo: Reuters
China now leads the world in industrial robot installations, with a record 2.027 million active robots, according to the International Federation of Robotics.
The country’s humanoid robot market has also seen rapid growth, with prominent start-ups like Shanghai-based AgiBot and Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics landing orders from state-owned firms.
In March, for the first time, Beijing designated “embodied intelligence” – AI integrated into physical machines – as a key future industry. Authorities later outlined plans to promote robotics adoption across various sectors, including manufacturing, aerospace and logistics.
Government support has filtered down to the entrepreneurial level, with nearly half of AI fundraising this year directed towards embodied intelligence start-ups, according to consultancy IT Juzi.
“China is running away with the hard-power part of AI – robotics,” Martin Casado and Anne Neuberger, a general partner and senior adviser, respectively, at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said in a recent post.
“We start seeing intelligence embedded in the physical world – culminating in generalist robots that perform a wide variety of tasks across applications, from manufacturing to services to defence,” they wrote. “The country betting on that future is China, not the US.”
Signs indicate that the US increasingly recognises the importance of AI applications in hard technology. OpenAI is reportedly ramping up hires for its robotics team and has partnered with autonomous driving start-up Applied Intuition.
However, none of the world’s “big four” industrial robotics firms – ABB Robotics, Fanuc, Kuka and Yaskawa Electric – are based in the US.
Huawei’s computing cluster on display at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images
The spending disparity between Silicon Valley and Chinese firms may not be critical, as Chinese hyperscalers do not always compete directly with their US counterparts, according to Poe Zhao, a Beijing-based tech analyst and founder of the Hello China Tech newsletter.
“At least in the AI field, the market has become completely parallelised, with each playing its own game,” he said. “I think many people in the English-speaking world do not understand just how big the Chinese cloud market really is, with many demands from different segments, from large state-owned enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises.”
“It is impossible for any company to be like Amazon – to be a one-stop shop that meets everyone’s needs, which gives Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu and ByteDance different opportunities.”
It also remained unclear just how far ahead US foundational models were compared to their Chinese rivals, according to Tilly Zhang, a Beijing-based tech analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics.
Chinese models consistently top popular global AI leader boards, particularly in image and video generation, often delivering comparable performance at a fraction of the training costs of US competing products.
The US government acknowledged the potential of China’s open-source ecosystem in driving global adoption.
Meanwhile, partners at Andreessen Horowitz pointed out that US start-ups and universities were heavily reliant on Chinese models.
The AI Action Plan emphasised the need for the US to develop leading open-source models, as the country’s previous open-source leader, Facebook owner Meta Platforms, has signalled it is no longer interested in open-sourcing its Llama models.
OpenAI swiftly responded to the government’s call in August with its first open model in six years, but the gap with China’s well-established ecosystem – similar to that in robotics – may already be too wide to bridge, according to open-source AI expert Nathan Lambert.
“Qwen alone is roughly matching the entire American open model ecosystem today”, Lambert said at a recent industry conference.
He highlighted the depth of China’s open-source ecosystem, which spans from Big Tech giants such as Huawei Technologies and ByteDance to unexpected developers like food delivery giant Meituan and Alibaba’s fintech affiliate Ant Group, which open-sourced a 1 trillion-parameter model on Thursday.
Just as OpenAI has allied itself with Nvidia and AMD, a self-sufficient AI ecosystem is emerging in China through a collaboration between Huawei and DeepSeek.
In the latest example, when DeepSeek introduced a new programming language called TileLang as part of its new foundational model, Hygon Information Technology and Cambricon Technologies quickly announced “day zero” chip support for the new model, while Huawei said it was developing core operators for TileLang.
“This synchronicity suggests a strategic alignment,” Hello China Tech’s Zhao said. “It is the second phase of a deliberate campaign to build a self-sufficient AI stack, free from Nvidia’s influence.”
The jury is still out on whether Chinese AI players can achieve ASI with local hardware, although Huawei touted that its clustering solution could address computing power needs.
Meanwhile, American lawmakers have called for broader chip export controls, believing access to US technologies remains crucial for China’s AI ambitions.
At the Apsara conference, hundreds of developers and customers listened intently to the presentations, many using a Qwen-powered translation and transcription tool. Alibaba appeared undeterred, as it stressed its commitment to cultivating a vibrant AI ecosystem.
There would only be “five or six hyperscalers globally” in the future, Wu said, implying that Alibaba would be one of them.
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Immunotherapy is rapidly transforming the treatment landscape of breast cancer—extending far beyond metastatic settings into neoadjuvant, adjuvant, and maintenance approaches. From adoptive cellular therapy with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) to immune checkpoint blockade combined with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or targeted agents, research efforts are reshaping how triple-negative and HER2-negative disease are treated across all stages.
Across global centers—from Shanghai and Paris to New York and Amsterdam—innovative phase I–III trials are testing PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors such as pembrolizumab, atezolizumab, tislelizumab, and adebrelimab, alongside novel agents like tiragolumab and TIGIT or CTLA-4 combinations. These studies aim not only to improve response and survival rates but also to uncover predictive biomarkers through advanced genomic and immune profiling.
Study on TIL for the Treatment of Advanced Breast Cancer
This early-phase, single-arm clinical trial sponsored by Shanghai Juncell Therapeutics is evaluating autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy (GC101 TIL) in patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have exhausted standard therapies.
Eligible patients (ages 18–75) undergo tumor biopsy or resection to isolate and expand TILs ex vivo. Following non-myeloablative lymphodepletion with hydroxychloroquine (600 mg, single dose) and cyclophosphamide, participants receive an intravenous infusion of 1×10⁹–5×10¹⁰ TILs over 30–120 minutes.
The primary objectives are to assess safety (adverse event incidence) and objective response rate (ORR) per RECIST v1.1. Secondary endpoints include disease control rate (DCR), duration of response (DOR), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and quality-of-life improvement measured by EORTC QLQ-C30.
Approximately 50 patients are being enrolled at Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, with primary completion expected in December 2024 and study completion in December 2025. This trial explores the feasibility and early clinical activity of adoptive TIL immunotherapy in heavily pretreated breast cancer.
Observational Study on the Sensitivity of Neoadjuvant Immunotherapy in Early Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
This prospective observational study, sponsored by Shandong University, aims to identify molecular signatures predictive of response, resistance, and immune-related toxicity in patients with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) receiving neoadjuvant PD-1 inhibitor–based chemoimmunotherapy.
A total of 200 patients aged 18–60 with newly diagnosed, non-metastatic TNBC will receive tislelizumab (200 mg IV, every 21 days) combined with albumin-bound paclitaxel (260 mg/m²) and carboplatin (AUC 4) for six cycles prior to surgery. Using deep sequencing of T-cell receptor (TCR) repertoires in peripheral blood collected before, during, and after therapy, investigators will analyze the dynamic immune landscape to distinguish immunotherapy-sensitive from resistant phenotypes and to predict severe immune-related adverse events (irAEs).
The primary endpoint is pathological complete response (pCR). Secondary endpoints include clinical response rate (cCR), frequency and severity of irAEs, and patterns of drug resistance. This study integrates AI-based TCR repertoire analysis to establish predictive biomarkers for individualized immunotherapy selection and toxicity risk stratification in TNBC.
Preoperative Immunotherapy Combined With Stereotactic Radiation Therapy Boost in HER2-Negative Breast Cancer (BREAST-BOOSTER)
This Phase II randomized, double-blind study, sponsored by the Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology (Poland), evaluates the safety and efficacy of pembrolizumab plus stereotactic radiation boostin patients with HER2-negative breast cancer showing poor metabolic response after initial chemotherapy.
After anthracycline-based induction, eligible patients (stage IIA–IV, including oligometastatic disease) are randomized 2:1 to receive pembrolizumab 200 mg IV every 3 weeks (×4) or placebo, combined with CyberKnife preoperative stereotactic radiotherapy delivered concurrently with paclitaxel ± carboplatin.
The primary endpoint is pathologic complete tumor regression confirmed in surgical specimens (per Simon’s two-stage design). Secondary endpoints include invasive disease-free survival, partial regression metrics, quality of life (QLQ-C30), and treatment-related toxicity (CTCAE v5.0).
A Study of BRIA-OTS Cellular Immunotherapy in Metastatic Recurrent Breast Cancer
This open-label Phase 1/2a trial, sponsored by BriaCell Therapeutics Corporation, evaluates the safety and preliminary efficacy of the BC1 allogeneic cellular immunotherapy—a HER2-positive, GM-CSF–secreting breast cancer cell line—alone and in combination with the Bria-OTS regimen and checkpoint inhibitor tislelizumab in patients with metastatic or recurrent breast cancer.
In Phase 1 (monotherapy), escalating doses of BC1 are administered intradermally every 2 weeks for four doses to determine safety and dose-limiting toxicity. Once the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) is established, the combination phase begins, adding low-dose cyclophosphamide (300 mg/m², 2–3 days before BC1), peginterferon alpha-2a (same day as inoculation), and tislelizumab every 3 weeks. Phase 2 expands treatment to 12 patients to assess clinical activity.
Primary endpoints include safety (AEs, SAEs, lab, ECG, and vital sign abnormalities). Secondary endpoints assess objective response rate (ORR), clinical benefit rate (CBR), duration of response (DoR), progression-free survival (PFS/PFS2), immune correlates, and HLA-based response stratification. The study also explores antigen expression (PD-L1, PD-L2, PRAME) on circulating tumor cells to identify predictors of response.
NOvel Immunotherapy Strategies for Advanced Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TONIC-3)
This Phase II, single-center, multi-cohort study, led by Dr. Marleen Kok at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, investigates tiragolumab-based combinations to improve immunotherapy outcomes in patients with advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). The trial explores synergistic immune activation using anti-TIGIT (tiragolumab) with PD-L1 blockade (atezolizumab) and/or CTLA-4 blockade (ipilimumab) in patients with PD-L1–negative disease (CPS < 10) or those previously treated with PD-(L)1 inhibitors.
Participants are randomized to three experimental arms:
Tiragolumab + Atezolizumab (600 mg + 1200 mg IV every 3 weeks)
Tiragolumab + Ipilimumab (600 mg + 1 mg/kg IV every 3 weeks × 4 cycles)
The primary endpoint is 12-week progression-free survival (PFS-12), with safety (CTCAE v5.0) as a co-primary measure. Secondary endpoints include objective response rate (ORR), clinical benefit rate (CBR), PFS, and overall survival (OS), assessed per iRECIST/RECIST 1.1. Correlative translational analyses will characterize tumor–immune interactions to identify biomarkers of response and resistance to combined checkpoint blockade.
Stereotactic Radiotherapy Combined With Adebrelimab and TCb (Nab-paclitaxel + Carboplatin) in Neoadjuvant Treatment of TNBC
This Phase II multicenter, randomized open-label trial, sponsored by Shengjing Hospital (China), investigates whether stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT) enhances the efficacy of adebrelimab (anti–PD-L1) combined with nab-paclitaxel plus carboplatin (TCb) as neoadjuvant therapy in patients with stage II–III triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
A total of 136 treatment-naïve female patients are randomized to two arms: the experimental arm receives adebrelimab plus SRT (initiated on the second cycle of adebrelimab, every other day for 3 fractions) followed by adebrelimab + TCb for six 3-week cycles; the control arm receives adebrelimab + TCb alone.
The primary endpoint is total pathologic complete response (tpCR) at surgery. The study aims to evaluate whether short-course stereotactic radiation can act as an immunologic primer, augmenting the antitumor response to adebrelimab-based chemoimmunotherapy.
Impact of Neoadjuvant Immunotherapy in Early Stage Breast Cancer Before Standard Therapy (BIS-Program)
This Phase II, open-label, adaptive randomized study, sponsored by Gustave Roussy (France), investigates the immunologic and biologic impact of short-term preoperative immunotherapy with atezolizumab, alone or in combination with biologic agents, in early-stage triple-negative (TNBC) and HER2-positive breast cancer prior to standard therapy or surgery.
The study enrolls up to 185 patients divided into two cohorts:
Cohort 1 (TNBC) – randomized to either atezolizumab monotherapy or atezolizumab + bevacizumab (both given once, 15 ± 2 days before surgery or neoadjuvant therapy).
Cohort 2 (HER2+) – randomized to trastuzumab + pertuzumab versus atezolizumab + trastuzumab + pertuzumab, also as single infusions before surgery or standard systemic treatment.
The primary endpoint is a ≥2-fold increase in activated GzmB⁺ CD8⁺ T cells from baseline to post-treatment (14 days), assessed via immunohistochemistry (IHC) on tumor biopsies. Secondary endpoints include clinical response, pathologic complete response (pCR), and biomarker evolution (PD-L1, Ki67, MHC-I, gene expression). Translational correlative analyses will explore immune activation profiles and tumor–immune dynamics following short-term checkpoint blockade.
Avelumab With Binimetinib, Sacituzumab Govitecan, or Liposomal Doxorubicin in Advanced TNBC (InCITe, TBCRC 047)
The InCITe (Innovative Combination Immunotherapy for Metastatic TNBC) trial is a Phase II, multicenter, open-label, multi-arm study led by Dr. Laura Huppert (UCSF) under the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC 047). It evaluates avelumab-based combination immunotherapy in patients with stage IV or unresectable, recurrent triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Patients are randomized to three active arms:
Arm A: Avelumab + Liposomal Doxorubicin + Binimetinib following a 15-day binimetinib lead-in.
Arm B: Avelumab + Sacituzumab Govitecan following a 15-day induction.
Arm C: Avelumab + Liposomal Doxorubicin following a 15-day lead-in.
The trial investigates whether immune-stimulatory “lead-in” therapy with cytotoxic or targeted agents can enhance checkpoint blockade efficacy. The primary endpoint is best overall response rate (BORR) per RECIST 1.1, while secondary endpoints include ORR (iRECIST), clinical benefit rate (CBR), PFS, OS, and patient-reported outcomes (PROMIS, PRO-CTCAE, TSQM).
Extensive translational correlative analyses aim to define predictive biomarkers of response, including PD-L1, TILs, MHC-I/II, TCR clonality, ctDNA dynamics, and microbiome composition.
Capecitabine Plus Pembrolizumab in TNBC After Chemo-immunotherapy and Surgery (CAPPA)
The CAPPA trial (NCT05973864) is a Phase II, multicenter, open-label study sponsored by UNICANCER (France)evaluating whether adding capecitabine to adjuvant pembrolizumab improves outcomes in patients with localized triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) who have residual disease after neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy with pembrolizumab.
In the experimental arm, patients receive pembrolizumab 200 mg IV every 3 weeks for 9 cycles, plus capecitabine 1250 mg/m² twice daily (14 days on/7 days off) for 8 cycles, with optional dose adjustment during radiotherapy. Results will be compared to an external real-world cohort of TNBC patients who received adjuvant pembrolizumab alone after surgery.
The primary endpoint is 2-year invasive disease-free survival (iDFS); secondary endpoints include overall survival (OS), distant disease-free survival (DDFS), and toxicity (CTCAE v5).
Radiation Therapy With Pembrolizumab and Olaparib or Other Radiosensitizers in Metastatic TNBC and HR+/HER2− Breast Cancer
This Phase II, open-label platform trial led by Dr. Atif Khan at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centerinvestigates whether combining pembrolizumab and ablative radiotherapy, with or without olaparib, can enhance antitumor immune responses in metastatic triple-negative (mTNBC) or hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative (mER+) breast cancer.
The trial includes three arms:
Arm A (mTNBC): pembrolizumab + RT + olaparib
Arm B (mTNBC, paused): pembrolizumab + RT
Arm C (mER+ MBC): pembrolizumab + SBRT + olaparib
Radiation is delivered as 8–9 Gy × 3 fractions (or 30 Gy/6 Gy × 5 for larger lesions). Pembrolizumab (200 mg IV q3w × 3 doses) and olaparib (150 mg × 2 bid, continuous for 2 cycles) are administered concurrently.
The primary endpoint is overall response rate (ORR) in unirradiated lesions at 8 weeks (RECIST v1.1). The study explores whether RT + PARP inhibition can potentiate systemic immune activation, even in PD-L1–negative or ICI-pretreated TNBC.
You Can Also Read About 10 ongoing Clinical Trials on Immunotherapy in Gastric Cancer
