Growing demand for CAR-T cell therapies is, in part, due to the increasing number of eligible patients. The market for CAR-T is expected to grow by almost 30% over the next decade. Meanwhile, there are over 1,500 CAR-Ts in development for cancer. In response, MedTherapy, a Boston-based cell and gene…

Patient-derived tumor organoids have been leveraged for disease modeling and preclinical studies but rarely applied in real time to aid with interpretation of patient treatment responses in clinics. Now, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have for the first time used lab-grown organoids created…

Research led by teams in Lausanne, Switzerland has developed a chimeric antigen-receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy that can be switched on and off using readily available existing drugs. CAR-T cell therapies are a type of cancer immunotherapy where T cells are engineered to better target the cancer cells of interest. These…

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have unveiled a new tool consisting of graphene oxide with attached antibodies that allows engineered CAR-T cells to more closely mimic the natural interactions between immune cells, effectively boosting the therapy’s cancer-fighting attributes. This innovation, reported recently in the journal Nature…

Hematologist oncologist Miloš Miljković, MD, joined Cartesian Therapeutics as chief medical officer (CMO) in September 2021 from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to do what he does best—develop and execute clinical programs—to help the RNA cell therapy company re-establish its stride in autoimmunity following the COVID-19 pandemic. “CAR-Ts have become…

A research study led by the University of Kansas suggests that the FDA-mandated monitoring period of diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma patients receiving chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy could be halved without harm to patients. Writing in the journal Blood Advances, first author Nausheen Ahmed, a researcher and hematologist…

A phase I clinical trial at Stanford Medicine has found that a new CAR-T cell therapy that targets a different protein—CD22—from the original therapy significantly improved patients’ outcomes. Over half of 38 people enrolled in the trial—37 of whom had already relapsed from the original CAR-T therapy—experienced a complete response…

AstraZeneca is acquiring cell therapy developer Gracell Biotechnologies Inc. for $1.2B. Gracell is focused on cancer and autoimmune diseases and, importantly, has a toehold in China. The biotech has ten programs in preclinical or later phases. Its most advanced candidate, GC012F, is in Phase I/II trials in the U.S. and…

A team of researchers from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Lausanne (UNIL), the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and the Vaud University Hospital (CHUV) in Switzerland have discovered how to prolong the functionality of CAR-T cells by inhibiting a specific metabolic mechanism. CAR-T cell immunotherapy, which involves taking immune cells from…

Moderna will partner with Chinese biotech CARsgen to co-develop a combined CAR T-cell and mRNA cancer vaccine therapy. The collaboration aims to combine Moderna’s Claudin18.2 mRNA cancer vaccine with CARsgen’s investigational Claudin18.2 autologous CAR T-cell product candidate (CT041) to test efficacy for targeting hard to treat cancers. Claudin 18.2 is…

Astellas and Poseida Therapeutics have announced a deal around Poseida’s MUC1C-ALLO1, an allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy in Phase I for multiple solid tumor indications. Astellas will invest a total of $50 million, including $25 million to acquire shares of common stock of Poseida at $3.00 per share in a private…

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, commonly referred to as CAR-T, has been an approved therapy for various forms of blood cancer. Now, evidence from a small clinical trial has indicated that a CAR-T adaptation could treat myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune disease of the nervous system. In the trial, the…

Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna have identified “exhausted” T cells in lymphoma patients as a potent biomarker that can be used to predict the success of CAR-T cell therapy in patients. In recent years, CAR-T cell therapy has been approved for lymphoma patients. CAR-T cells are lymphocytes taken from…

Candel Therapeutics, a clinical stage developer of viral immunotherapies, announced Wednesday that it will collaborate with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) Center for Cellular Immunotherapies to study the efficacy of using viral immunotherapies to help boost the effects of UPenn’s CAR-T cell therapies in solid tumor models. The…

Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), in Germany have successfully cured several patients suffering from severe systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) using genetically modified immune cells known as CAR-T cells. CAR T cells are immune cells taken from an individual patient and genetically engineered to express proteins known as CAR—chimeric antigen receptors—on…