Date: 2018-05-16
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) constructs , off-the-shelf T-cell immunotherapies
Company: Fate Therapeutics (USA - CA) Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer (USA - NY)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology - Immunological diseases
Type agreement: R&D - research
Action mechanism:
- immunotherapy product/CAR-T cell therapy. Cellular immunotherapies are poised to transform the treatment of cancer and immunological conditions. However, cellular immunotherapies currently undergoing clinical investigation are patient-specific and their delivery requires the extraction, engineering, expansion and re-introduction of each individual patient's T cells. This multi-step manufacturing process is logistically challenging and complex, and significant hurdles remain to ensure that patient-specific T-cell immunotherapies can be efficiently and consistently manufactured, and safely and reliably delivered, at the scale necessary to support broad patient access and wide-spread commercialization.
Induced pluripotent cells possess the unique dual properties of self-renewal and differentiation potential into all cell types of the body including T cells. Similar to master cell lines used for the manufacture of monoclonal antibodies, engineered pluripotent cell lines can repeatedly deliver clonal populations of T cells with broad histocompatibility and enhanced effector functions. These highly-stable pluripotent cell lines have the potential to serve as a renewable cell source for the consistent manufacture of homogeneous populations of effector cells for the treatment of many thousands of patients.
Disease:
Details:
- • On September 7, 2016, Fate Therapeutics announced a partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for the development of off-the-shelf T-cell product candidates using engineered pluripotent cell lines. Research and development activities under the multi-year collaboration will be led by Michel Sadelain, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Cell Engineering and the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
The collaboration unites research, preclinical development and manufacturing work currently being conducted independently at Fate Therapeutics and Memorial Sloan Kettering to accelerate the clinical translation of T-cell product candidates derived from engineered pluripotent cells. Collectively, the groups have amassed significant and complementary expertise necessary to deliver off-the-shelf T-cell immunotherapies, including the engineering, maintenance and expansion of induced pluripotent cell lines and the scalable generation of T cells with enhanced safety profiles and effector functions.
- In connection with the partnership, Fate Therapeutics has exclusively licensed from Memorial Sloan Kettering foundational intellectual property covering induced pluripotent cell-derived immune cells, including T cells and NK cells derived from pluripotent cells engineered with chimeric antigen receptors, for human therapeutic use. Additionally, Fate Therapeutics maintains an option to exclusively license intellectual property arising from all research and development activities under the collaboration.
Financial terms:
Latest news:
- • On May 16 2018, Fate Therapeutics announced the company has gained access to additional intellectual property from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that enables the development of gene-edited T-cell immunotherapies. The newly-licensed portfolio of intellectual property covers new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) constructs as well as off-the-shelf CAR T cells, including the use of CRISPR and other innovative technologies for their production.
- Fate Therapeutics is utilizing gene editing under its ongoing collaboration for the research and development of off-the-shelf CAR T-cell immunotherapies with Michel Sadelain, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Cell Engineering and the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
- Fate Therapeutics has exclusively licensed from MSK intellectual property covering the production and composition of iPSC-derived T cells for human therapeutic use. In addition, Fate Therapeutics owns an extensive intellectual property portfolio that broadly covers compositions and methods for the genome editing of iPSCs using CRISPR and other nucleases, including the use of CRISPR to insert a CAR in the TRAC locus for endogenous transcriptional control.
• On December 9, 2017, Fate Therapeutics announced the generation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-targeted CD8alphabeta+ T cells from a clonal engineered master pluripotent cell line (MPCL). The clonal engineered MPCL was created from an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC), which was modified in a one-time engineering event using CRISPR/Cas9 to both insert a CAR into the T-cell receptor - constant (TRAC) locus and eliminate T-cell receptor (TCR) expression. The groundbreaking development enables the renewable production of CAR-targeted, TCR-null CD8alphabeta+ T cells that are not restricted to an individual patient for off-the-shelf administration.
Is general: Yes
