Kite Pharma could in fact be interested in a kill switch although not for its current clinical program which is focused upon engineering a patients own T cells to treat their cancer.
The future of CAR-T therapy, however, may be tied in with stem cell therapies utilising Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells or iPSCs. In July 2016, Kite in-licensed tech to create off-the-shelf T cell therapies from renewable pluripotent stem cells. The exclusive worldwide license agreement with UCLA allows Kite to develop a platform for off-the-shelf allogenic T cell therapies that is not reliant upon using a patients own T cells. Do we need a kill switch now?
The answer may well be YES according to an article Safety switches may redeem potent CAR T cancer therapies by Ransdell Pierson, May 7, 2015. The reason is that CAR-T therapies carry significant risks for patients including life threatening fevers and inflammation. Juno Therapeutics has stopped its lead CAR-T program following patient deaths. Then there is the question of using CAR-T therapy for solid tumors with the risk of attacking healthy cells containing the same protein as cancerous cells. An engineered kill switch would be a refinement of the body's natural process of apoptosis which could be turned on if things go pear shaped.
In fact, it appears that a kill switch may be absolutely required for the development of CAR-T therapy in solid tumors. Where do you get these kill switches? Could iMYC be used as a kill switch in CAR-T therapy given the pioneering work by MSK on Omomyc? If the answer is yes then the door opens to the use of iMYCS in the development of CAR-T cells which is the next era in immuno-oncology. One of the global pre-eminent experts in CAR-T therapy would undoubtedly be Dr Rick Kendall.
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