On April 8, 2022 Catamaran Bio, Inc., a biotechnology company developing allogeneic, off‑the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cell therapies to treat cancer, reported preclinical data showing that CAT-179, a cryopreserved, allogeneic HER2-targeted CAR-NK cell therapy, reduces tumor burden and extends survival in a HER2 mouse xenograft model. The results will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting being held in New Orleans from April 8‑13, 2022 (Press release, Catamaran Bio, APR 8, 2022, View Source [SID1234611740]).

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"With these results, CAT-179 exemplifies the industry-leading capabilities of our TAILWIND platform to engineer off-the-shelf CAR-NK cell therapies with the features to overcome critical barriers to treat solid tumors," said Vipin Suri, PhD, MBA, Chief Scientific Officer of Catamaran Bio. "We are successfully integrating NK cell engineering with scalable and efficient cell processing and manufacturing to deliver on the promise of off-the-shelf CAR-NK cell therapies for solid tumors, and we are excited to be rapidly advancing CAT-179 toward the clinic."

Data presented in a poster titled, "Allogeneic Natural Killer Cells Engineered to Express HER2 CAR, Interleukin 15, and TGF beta Dominant Negative Receptor Effectively Control HER2+ Tumors," describe experiments showing key capabilities of the TAILWINDTM platform and characterization of the HER2-targeted CAR-NK cells. Highlights from the preclinical results include:

CAT-179 was efficiently engineered (45% CAR+) from donor-derived NK cells using the non-viral TcBuster transposon system, incorporating a multi-cistronic cargo containing HER2 CAR, IL15, and TGFβ dominant negative receptor (TGFβ DNR). The result was stable expression of the construct without the need for post-engineering selection.
CAT-179 demonstrated HER2-CAR-driven interferon gamma production and tumor cell killing in vitro when co-cultured with HER2+ tumor cells.
The TGFβ DNR in CAT-179 demonstrated resistance to TGFb-mediated immunosuppression in vitro.
CAT-179 cells persisted in vitro without the need for exogenous cytokines and showed significantly enhanced in vivo persistence up to at least 40 days in mouse models.
CAT-179 showed potent anti-tumor activity against a xenografted HER2+ ovarian cancer cell line (SKOV3), leading to a substantial survival benefit in tumor-bearing mice. Overall, CAT-179 treated animals demonstrated tumor reduction of 98% compared to control animals (p<0.019 two-tailed t-test) and had a median survival of 114 days vs. control animal median survival of 60 days.
The poster is available on the publications and presentations section of the Catamaran Bio website.