Date: 2016-12-16
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound:
Company: Cytosen Therapeutics (USA - TX) University of Central Florida (USA - FL)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: licensing
Action mechanism: immunotherapy product/cell therapy
Disease:
Details:
- • On December 16, 2016, Cyto-Sen Therapeutics, a Florida-based startup company created by NK researchers and physicians including UCF researcher Alicja Copik and others at UCF, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, announced that the company has recently licensed a technology developed by Alicja Copik at the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine. UCF’s technology uses nanoparticles that signal the Natural Killer (NK) cells to reproduce and arm themselves to fight the cancer. In Copik’s lab, one NK cell taken from a patient and contacted by the nanoparticle yielded 10,000 new cells in two weeks. If the technology can be safely manufactured and is effective in clinical trials, it could allow any hospital that provides cell therapies such as bone marrow transplants to create their own advanced NK cells on-site for cancer patients.
- Dr. Dean Lee, medical director and vice president of Cyto-Sen. will lead the manufacturing effort at Nationwide’s cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practices) facility, which is required to meet the strict quality and safety standards set by the FDA for creating medical therapies for humans.
- Copik’s NK cell research was supported by two $400,000 grants from the Florida Department of Health’s Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program.
Financial terms:
Latest news:
Is general: Yes
