On November 7, 2024 NEC Bio reported that it has successfully modified T cell receptors (TCRs) to increase their efficacy (Press release, NEC, NOV 7, 2024, View Source [SID1234647787]). This achievement marks a major step forward in drug development and personalized medicine since prediction and engineering of TCR sequences that are able to bind to specific target sequences remains a major challenge in the field. The technology is being presented as a poster at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper) in Houston, Texas, from November 6 to 10, 2024.

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Advancing Personalized Cancer Treatment
NEC Bio’s mission is to develop groundbreaking therapies for patients around the globe using advanced cutting edge AI technologies. TCR-based therapies use the high binding affinity of TCR to bind to defined cancer cells and destruct them using various strategies. One major hurdle in the development of TCR therapies is the difficulty in identifying TCR sequences that will bind specifically to given target sequences. Conventionally, this involves a labor-intensive process of lab screening, trying to isolate the necessary TCR from human donor cells.

Motoo Nishihara, Corporate Executive Vice President and CTO of NEC, said: "We are incredibly proud to announce our work on T Cell Receptor engineering using our proprietary generative AI, presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper) annual meeting. This initiative emphasizes our dedication to advancing immunotherapy and highlights the transformative potential of our technology. We are excited about the future and the significant impact our innovations will have on the field of cancer treatment. This technology makes our portfolio stronger and serves our mission to bring AI-led innovative medicine to patients globally."

About the technology
The AI model developed at NEC Bio utilizes generative AI and domain-specific large language models (LLMs) for creating novel TCRs with high efficacy. Given a target peptide, the AI model can generate high affinity TCR sequences for targeted therapy based on knowledge from machine learning on physio-chemical TCR interactions. The AI was benchmarked on public datasets and achieved better performance than baseline methods. The AI-designed TCRs were shown to have enhanced TCR activities in cell-based assays conducted in collaboration with Aichi Cancer Center.

Building on this success, NEC Bio will expand the application of its generative AI technology to design TCRs for various oncodriver targets, antibodies for specific targets, immunoproteins, DNA constructs, mRNA constructs, and more. This broad application spectrum highlights NEC Bio’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in drug design and development.

SITC poster details
NEC Bio is presenting this technology in a poster at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper), in Houston, Texas, from November 6 to 10, 2024. Details on the poster are below:

Poster title: Design of Enhanced TCRs Against Cancer Antigens Using an AI System

Authors: Martin Renqiang Min, Tianxiao Li, Kazuhide Onoguchi, Daiki Mori, Jonathan Warrell, Pierre Machart, Anja Moesch, Andrea Meiser, Ivy Grace Pait, Ayako Okamura, Daisuke Muraoka, Hirokazu Matsushita, Kaidre Bendjama

Poster Number: 1230
Date: November 7, 2024
The poster can be found here: Home | NEC Bio B.V