Cell Medica announced today that it has been awarded an $8.7 million research grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The grant will support preclinical and clinical development of the company\u2019s off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer T cell (CAR-NKT) therapies to treat hematological and solid tumors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CPRIT grant will support development programs being conducted in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) that are designed to address the limitations of the current first-generation autologous CAR-T cell therapies. The aim is to deliver an off-the-shelf approach, with simplified manufacturing, that can serve larger patient numbers, and which allows treatment closer to the time of patient presentation. The program currently includes four therapies in early-stage development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CMD-502 is Cell Medica\u2019s most advanced off-the-shelf therapy and a first-in-human study is expected to start in the second half of 2019. Called the ANCHOR study, it will be a dose escalation evaluation of CMD-502 in adults with relapsed or refractory (R\/R) diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CPRIT awarded a $15.3 million grant to Cell Medica in 2012, to support the establishment of operations in Houston, Texas and fund earlier development programs. Through the current grant, CPRIT-funded research will be conducted at both BCM and Cell Medica\u2019s Houston facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chris Nowers, CEO of Cell Medica, commented: \u201cCPRIT was instrumental in enabling us to establish our US operations in Texas, so we are delighted to extend that collaboration through a further grant. This funding will accelerate development of our off-the-shelf CAR-NKT pipeline and, given CPRIT\u2019s deep and broad review, also brings a strong independent validation of our platform and approach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr.\u00a0Carlos Ramos, Associate Professor, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, at BCM and principal investigator in Phase 1 ANCHOR study, added: \u201cIt has been a great pleasure working with the multi-disciplinary team at Cell Medica in the development of its versatile CAR-NKT platform. Off-the-shelf CAR-NKT cell therapy has the potential to become a better and simpler approach to CAR therapy for patients with hematological and solid tumors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlthough existing autologous CAR-T cell therapies have demonstrated impressive response rates, the patient-specific manufacturing process is technically challenging, costly, and time-consuming, and comes with complex logistics and substantial treatment delays. The unique properties of NKT cells bring the potential to solve these challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cell Medica announced today that it has been awarded an $8.7 million research grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The grant will support preclinical and clinical development of the company\u2019s off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer T cell (CAR-NKT) therapies to treat hematological and solid tumors. The CPRIT grant will support Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design4paper.com\/vipartners-test-live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}