Date: 2017-03-10
Type of information: Development agreement
Compound: small molecule drug conjugates platform in the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T-cell) immunotherapy setting
Company: Endocyte (USA - IN) Seattle Children's Research Institute (USA - WA)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: development
Action mechanism:
- cell therapy/immunotherapy product/gene therapy/CAR-T cell therapy.
- Endocyte's SMDC bi-specific adaptors represent a novel approach that makes possible the engineering of a single universal CAR T-cell, designed to bind with high affinity to fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC). This universal CAR T-cell can be specifically directed to cancer cells through the administration of a tumor targeted FITC-containing SMDC, known as a bi-specific adaptor, that acts to bridge the universal CAR T-cell with the cancer cells to cause localized T-cell activation. This technology may address or mitigate several challenges of current CAR T-cell therapies, such as
- i) the inability to control the rate of cytokine release and tumor lysis,
- ii) the absence of an "off switch" that can terminate cytotoxic activity when tumor eradication is complete, and
- iii) a requirement to generate a different CAR T-cell for each unique tumor antigen.
Disease:
Details:
- • On March 10, 2017, Endocyte announced their plan to collaborate with Seattle Children's Research Institute and Dr. Michael Jensen for the development of Endocyte's SMDC small molecule drug conjugates platform in the chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T-cell) immunotherapy setting through the use of Endocyte's proprietary SMDC bi-specific adaptor molecules.
- The aim of the research collaboration is to join Endocyte's SMDC bi-specific adaptor technology with the CAR T-cell immunotherapy research efforts at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research at Seattle Children's Research Institute, to move these potentially enabling technologies more quickly to patients in the clinic. Dr. Jensen, a recognized leader in the field of CAR T-cell research, is the director of Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research and the Janet and Jim Sinegal Endowed Chair in Pediatric Solid Tumor Research at Seattle Children's Research Institute, and a professor of hematology-oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
- Research and development activities under the collaboration will be led by Dr. Michael Jensen and Dr. Phil Low, chief scientific officer at Endocyte and professor of chemistry and director of the Center for Drug Discovery at Purdue University.
Financial terms:
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Is general: Yes
