Dive Brief:
- Kite Pharma, a leading company in the CAR-T space, has inked a deal with the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to license technology aimed at developing "off-the-shelf" allogeneic T-cell therapies, the company said Monday.
- The technology in question stems from research conducted by Dr. Gay Crooks at UCLA into a type of artificial cell culture system which can support ex vivo differentiation of T-cells from pluripotent stem cells.
- Kite, along with Juno Therapeutics, Novartis and others, has focused primarily on developing autologous CAR-T therapies, in which T-cells are extracted from a patient before being genetically engineered and then reintroduced to the body. An allogeneic approach, pioneered by the French company Cellectis, promises greater reach for any future therapy.
Dive Insight:
Since Kite Pharma first presented data on its primary candidate KTE-C19, an autologous T-cell therapy which targets the CD19 antigen, the company has racked up a number of orphan drug designations from the Food and Drug Administration. Kite is currently aiming to submit KTE-C19 for approval in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma next year.
While autologous CAR-T has shown promising efficacy in blood cancer clinical trials, there a number of pressing challenges to development and potential commercial use. Given the nature of extracting, engineering, and reintroducing a patient's T-cells, the therapy is complex from a manufacturing standpoint. That complexity could weigh on widespread use of any future commercial product, not to mention the likely high price tag.
An allogeneic approach, if successful, would allow a company to create "off-the-shelf" T-cell therapies, which could potentially be used by a wider group of patients. Kite's deal with UCLA is aimed at exploring that approach.
Dr. Crooks has developed a "artificial thymic organoid" cell culture system which replicates the human thymic environment. Using this system, Kite could potentially more efficiently produce T-cells from pluripotent stem cell lines, lowering the barrier to development of an allogeneic T-cell therapy.
"This ATO system represents a significant breakthrough in stem cell biology that will drive our long-term strategy to develop best-in-class allogeneic T-cell therapies," said David Chang, chief medical offier at Kite.
"This platform provides a renewable source of T-cells and can be further exploited with gene engineering, including chimeric antigen receptors, T-cell receptors and other gene modifications of interest, to generate potent T-cell products that have the potential to be resistant to rejection and to bear no risk of graft-versus-host disease."
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but Kite has exclusive global rights to develop the technology for T-cell products in oncology.