Date: 2017-01-10
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: adoptive cell transfer (ACT)-based immunotherapies genetically modified using the Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon/transposase system
Company: Ziopharm Oncology (USA - MA) Intrexon (USA - MD) National Cancer Institute (NCI) (USA)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: R&D
Action mechanism: cell therapy/immunotherapy product. The SB transposon-transposase is a unique system for introducing genes encoding chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and TCRs into lymphocytes. This non-viral platform may play an important role in immunotherapy and has several potential advantages over viral-based delivery systems including lowering the cost of genetic modification and the generation of T cells with minimal ex vivo processing supporting the personalization of T-cell therapy.
Disease: solid tumors
Details: * On January 10, 2017, Ziopharm Oncology and Intrexon announced the signing of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the development of adoptive cell transfer (ACT)-based immunotherapies genetically modified using the Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon/transposase system to express T-cell receptors (TCRs) for the treatment of solid tumors.
The principal goal of the CRADA is to develop and evaluate ACT for patients with advanced cancers using autologous peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) genetically modified using the non-viral SB system to express TCRs that recognize specific immunogenic mutations, or neoantigens, expressed within a patient's cancer. Clinical evaluations of the ability of these SB-engineered PBL to express TCRs reactive against cancer mutations to mediate cancer regression in patients with metastatic disease will be performed.
Research conducted under the CRADA will be at the direction of Steven A. Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of the Surgery Branch at the NCI's Center for Cancer Research, in collaboration with researchers at ZIOPHARM and Intrexon.
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