Great to see this recognised on the cover of Nature Science our second asset to be featured in a leading science magazine. Chlorotoxin was featured in Science Translational medicine a few years back.
Jenn mentioned at the investor meet they were "incredibly excited about this asset" and that Carl June the inventor and godfather of Car-T was actually also involved in the development of CHD17 out of U Penn over the last 10 years of pre-clinical work. Most of the work was done by Xianxin Hua and his team. Carl June also named on the extract.
Statement from CHM at time of licensing
More than a decade of research and optimization has gone into development of the novel CDH17 CAR T cell therapy, developed by leading cellular immunotherapy scientist Xianxin Hua, MD, PhD, and his team. Dr Hua is a professor of Cancer Biology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, an investigator at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and a Harrington Scholar Innovator.
I haven't accessed the full article yet but the use of the words eradicated in the extract is very exciting...
Gastrointestinal cancers (GICs) and neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are often refractory to therapy after metastasis. Adoptive cell therapy using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, though remarkably efficacious for treating leukemia, is yet to be developed for solid tumors such as GICs and NETs. Here we isolated a llama-derived nanobody, VHH1, and found that it bound cell surface adhesion protein CDH17 upregulated in GICs and NETs. VHH1-CAR T cells (CDH17CARTs) killed both human and mouse tumor cells in a CDH17-dependent manner. CDH17CARTs eradicated CDH17-expressing NETs and gastric, pancreatic and colorectal cancers in either tumor xenograft or autochthonous mouse models. Notably, CDH17CARTs do not attack normal intestinal epithelial cells, which also express CDH17, to cause toxicity, likely because CDH17 is localized only at the tight junction between normal intestinal epithelial cells. Thus, CDH17 represents a class of previously unappreciated tumor-associated antigens that is ‘masked’ in healthy tissues from attack by CAR T cells for developing safer cancer immunotherapy.A very good write up about the background of Carl's work here and the story of Emily Whitehead the first Car-T patient
https://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/Fulltext/2022/03200/The_Incredible_Story_of_Emily_Whitehead___CAR.1.aspx This also gives an overview of whats coming in Cell therapy including NK Cells which are also in our pipeline. Again showing CHM only partner and license from the best medical institutions.
Not long until we are in human with this now. Hopefully plenty more Emily whitehead stories come out of this for solid tumor patients.
