On October 17, 2021 CytoImmune Therapeutics, Inc. ("CytoImmune"), a clinical-stage immunotherapy company, reported that believes its strategic plan not affected by the recent developments around Allogene Therapeutics’ AlloCAR T (Press release, CytoImmune Therapeutics, OCT 17, 2021, View Source [SID1234591776]). CytoImmune’s approach to NK cell immunotherapy does not involve lentiviral transduction or gene editing.
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On October 7th 2021, Allogene Therapeutics reported an FDA clinical hold on its AlloCAR T trials based on a single patient case in its ALPHA2 trial. Assessment of a patient with low blood counts showed a clonal chromosomal abnormality in ALLO-501A CAR T cells of unclear clinical significance. ALLO-501A is an anti-CD19 AlloCAR T which entered Phase 1/2 study in June 2020. ALLO-501A is a T cell product that has undergone lentiviral transduction for expression of its chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and two rounds of gene editing to knock out the T-cell receptor as well as expression of CD52. The cause of the chromosomal abnormality found in the patient’s ALLO-501A CAR T cells is currently under investigation.
In contrast, CytoImmune is developing a novel class of allogeneic, off-the-shelf natural killer (NK) cell-based immunotherapies engineered to eliminate cancer cells using well-established retroviral transduction technology without the use of gene editing technologies. Our NK cell engineering platform builds on our founders 54 years of collective laboratory investigation of NK cells, their treatment of over 1,000 patients with therapies modulating NK cells in man, and their extensive history of transducing human NK cells to assess gene function.
Our current platforms include proprietary technologies that enable us to: (1) generate an abundant supply of potent human CAR NK cells to treat multiple patients from a single umbilical cord blood product, (2) undertake highly efficient retroviral transduction of the CAR and/or secreted bispecific killer cell engagers into human NK cells, (3) improve the persistence of these CAR NK cells for sustained activity once infused into the body, (4) freeze, store and thaw our CAR NK cells to be infused as an unmatched, allogeneic off-the-shelf treatment of cancer.
CytoImmune continues to advance its NK cell-based platform toward the clinic with patient safety as our highest priority.