On January 11, 2016 ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. (Nasdaq:ZIOP), a biopharmaceutical company focused on new cancer immunotherapies, reported that its Sleeping Beauty non-viral gene transfer technology was featured in a perspectives article in the January 2016 issue of the journal Nature Medicine (Volume 22, Number 1, 26—36), titled "Prospects for gene-engineered T cell immunotherapy for solid cancers" (Press release, Ziopharm, JAN 11, 2016, View Source [SID:1234508761]). Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo! The article describes how adoptive transfer of receptor-engineered T cells has produced "impressive results in treating B-cell leukemias and lymphomas," but that effective treatment of solid cancers using a similar approach based upon pursuing shared tumor antigens is unlikely. It suggests that the success of cell-based immunotherapies for solid tumors may come from the "arduous task of targeting the unique set of mutations that cause each patient’s cancer." Because of the challenges of achieving this goal, the authors note that nonviral integration systems can be considerably cheaper to manufacture and easier to implement for single-use applications compared with viral vectors and that, among these, Sleeping Beauty has advanced farthest in clinical development.
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The Sleeping Beauty transposon-transposase is a unique non-viral system for introducing genes encoding T-cell receptors and chimeric antigen receptors into lymphocytes that was exclusively licensed to ZIOPHARM and its collaboration partner, Intrexon Corporation (NYSE:XON), through an agreement with the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
"Implementing immunotherapy for solid tumors goes hand-in-hand with generating individualized T-cell therapies. To move beyond shared targets on the cell surface of liquid tumors to more complex, multifaceted targets within solid tumors requires a robust set of technologies to take advantage of antigen discovery," said Laurence Cooper, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of ZIOPHARM. "Sleeping Beauty is a clinical platform unlike any other, both in its stage of development and flexibility for the implementation of low cost, personalized T-cell therapies. Along with other technologies developed with our partners and collaborators, it has the potential to play a key role accessing tumor-associated antigens at the individual level thereby translating the enormous promise of adoptive cell therapy to all cancers."