Clinical Phase Oncology company Prescient Therapeutics (ASX: PTX) today unveiled the latest technology in its portfolio, a high-performance platform known as CellPryme-M designed to improve cell therapies.
Developed by Prescient in collaboration with the world’s leading cancer research institute, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, CellPryme-M produces superior cells during the cell manufacturing process that are “less prone to depletion, allowing for longer lifespan. ‘cancer killing activity and are able to improve tumor trafficking and penetrance compared to the current generation of CAR-T cells ”.
According to Prescient, CellPryme-M CAR-T cells perform “significantly better” than conventional CAR-T cells in highly aggressive solid cancer models.
CellPryme-M is now confirmed ready for use in clinical trials, and Prescient said it plans to use the platform to enhance the cells used in its innovative OmniCAR programs.
“This GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] can be easily incorporated into any CAR-T manufacturing program to significantly increase the cancer-killing ability of T cells by shifting their phenotype to a less differentiated state, “explained Dr Rebecca Lim, senior vice president for Prescient Scientific Affairs.
“CellPryme-M alters key signaling paths in as little as 15 minutes, which means users can incorporate CellPryme-M into their manufacturing process with virtually no disruption, even if their production times range from 24 to 48 hours.”
The company will also seek to license CellPryme-M to other cell therapy companies to enhance conventional CAR-T programs and initiate value-added collaborations with external parties.
CellPryme-M platform
Prescient’s second cell therapy platform, CellPryme-M, produces cells with superior phenotypes by influencing gene expression in immune cells. The cellular phenotype determines the clinical anticancer responses.
Cells produced by the CellPryme-M process showed many favorable characteristics required by more effective cell therapies, including: 50% more central memory T cells (a clinically relevant subtype); double proportion of CD4 + T helper cells (for synergy with effector T cells); significantly more chemokine receptors (important for tumor trafficking and penetrance); and greater genomic stability and DNA repair for greater self-renewal.
In a highly aggressive mouse model of breast cancer that was largely resistant to conventional CAR-T, CAR-T CellPryme-M cells nearly doubled tumor control compared to conventional CAR-T and “significantly improved survival.”
New business opportunity
Prescient CEO and CEO Steven Yatomi-Clarke said CellPryme-M opens up an entirely new business opportunity to license the platform to other cell therapy companies.
“It requires minimal intervention in the existing and emerging manufacturing process and therefore represents a relatively low implementation hurdle.”
“This opens up real business opportunities for Prescient to incorporate CellPryme-M into third party manufacturing processes,” he added.
Dr Lim also said she sees “huge potential” for CellPryme-M to benefit third-party CAR-T programs that have struggled to achieve good tumor persistence and penetrance with their CAR T cells.
“What’s also exciting is that these effects are likely to extend CellPryme-M to other cell therapy modalities such as CAR-NK, TCR T cells etc, as tumor persistence and penetrance continue to be key to the clearance of the tumor. tumor, “he added.