On August 27, 2021 Carina Biotech reported that has entered a collaboration agreement with Melbourne biotech AdAlta to develop precision engineered, i-body enabled CAR-T therapies that provide new hope for patients with cancer (Press release, Carina Biotech, AUG 27, 2021, View Source [SID1234586959]).

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This is a collaboration at the cutting-edge of cancer medicine, bringing together Carina’s world-leading proprietary CAR-T technologies with AdAdlta’s unique i-body platform. The agreement will develop i-body enabled CAR-T cancer immunotherapies against up to five solid tumour antigen targets.

The small size and unique targeting of i-bodies provides for greater flexibility and design options for CAR-T cells, which are ideally suited for the production of bi-specific CAR-T cells.

Bi-specific CAR-T cells have the potential to deliver precisions to difficult-to-target cancers – by targeting two antigens on cancer cells, reducing the opportunity for tumour cells to be missed, and reducing the chances of damaging healthy tissue.

Carina’s CEO, Dr Deborah Rathjen, commented: "This collaboration with AdAlta gives us the capability to generate bi-specific CAR molecules and then next-generation CAR-T cell products with enhanced cancer targeting and efficacy – something we are very excited about. The collaboration is off to a great start with Carina already having successfully inserted an AdAlta i-body into a CAR-T cell with functional cancer killing capability."

Carina and AdAlta will jointly fund pre-clinical proof-of-concept studies in mouse tumour models and will jointly own products emerging from the collaboration.