SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Progenitor announces Stealth™ platform enabling sourcing of cells from a wide range of healthy donors, without donor-recipient HLA-matching. Stealth™-engineered cells also reduce immune-mediated adverse events caused by unintended activation of the recipient’s immune system following infusion of engineered cell therapies.
CAR-T therapies are highly promising but require patient-by-patient engineering that delays treatment and increases cost to a point that could limit adoption in the current healthcare economy. For CAR-T therapies to remain viable, it is necessary to: (i) reduce costs of autologous therapies; and (ii) develop new allogeneic ‘off-the-shelf’ therapies.
In off-the-shelf therapies, allogeneic cells sourced from healthy donors undergo industrial-scale engineering and production in a centralized facility, producing a ready-to-ship product that requires minimal preparation before infusion, making broad distribution possible.
A barrier to off-the-shelf allogeneic therapies has been the cost of HLA-matching and cross-typing between donor cells and recipients. HLA-incompatible cells trigger MHC-I-mediated destruction by recipient cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). Progenitor’s Stealth™ technology disrupts MHC-I via a non-viral method, while maintaining cell-surface MHC-I expression. Consequently, Stealth™-engineered cells evade both recipient CTL responses and NKC-mediated “missing-self’ responses triggered by absence of cell-surface MHC-I.
Progenitor CSO, Dr. Tim Graham, remarks, “Progenitor’s Stealth™ Platform overcomes HLA-matching barriers by producing universally immune-compatible cells, which simplifies manufacturing and dramatically reduces production cost. In addition, Stealth™ cells are designed to reduce life-threatening adverse events associated with the current generation of autologous CAR-T therapies, including cytokine release syndrome, neurotoxicity, cerebral edema, and anaphylaxis. Stealth™ technology can be incorporated side-by-side with Progenitor’s other proprietary cell engineering methods, such as our VanGogh™ footprint-free cell editing and Rodin™ switchable gene expression, to produce immune-compatible cells lacking undesirable DNA sequences introduced into the genome during cell engineering and selection, or featuring the capacity for small molecule-mediated temporal control of transgene expression in vivo. Progenitor’s cell-engineering technologies open important new doors for next-generation cellular immunotherapies and bring obvious value to the regenerative medicine sector, as well.”
Progenitor Life Sciences develops platform solutions for immune oncology. Our unique proprietary solutions enable creation of allogeneic ‘off-the-shelf’ CAR constructs from a variety of cell sources. Progenitor partners with companies providing access to its unique suite of technologies.
