A US$8.7 million research grant has been given to London-based Cell Medica from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The grant will support preclinical and clinical development of the company’s off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer T cell (CAR-NKT) therapies to treat haematological and solid tumours.
The CPRIT grant will support development programmes being conducted in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). The programmes are designed to address the limitations of the current first-generation autologous CAR-T cell therapies.
Cell Medica aims to deliver an off-the-shelf approach, with simplified manufacturing, that can serve larger patient numbers, and which allows treatment closer to the time of patient presentation. Four therapies are currently in early-stage development.
CPRIT awarded a $15.3 million grant to Cell Medica in 2012, to support the establishment of operations in Houston, Texas and fund earlier development programmes.
Chris Nowers, CEO of Cell Medica, said: “CPRIT was instrumental in enabling us to establish our US operations in Texas, so we are delighted to extend that collaboration through a further grant. This funding will accelerate development of our off-the-shelf CAR-NKT pipeline and, given CPRIT’s deep and broad review, also brings a strong independent validation of our platform and approach.”
Dr Carlos Ramos, Associate Professor of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at BCM, added: “Although existing autologous CAR-T cell therapies have demonstrated impressive response rates, the patient-specific manufacturing process is technically challenging, costly, and time-consuming, and comes with complex logistics and substantial treatment delays. The unique properties of NKT cells bring the potential to solve these challenges.”