The following were some thoughts I put together during the week but discussion on the topic got sidelined I guess by the announced capital raising.
I thought I’d come back to the idea in the light of a new announcement by Regen BioPharma which I came across this morning (second part of the post).
PTX’s initial Cell Therapy Enhancement (CTE) program was with Carina Biotech (Nov 2019). Carina was said to have “promising CAR-T technologies to develop CAR-T combination therapiesto treat a range of solid cancers.”
In July 2021, the Carina CTE collaboration program, now fully owned by PTX, was transferred to Peter Mac, under the leadership of Prof. Phil Darcy.
One of the areas of study at Prof. Darcy’s lab is combination therapies, where gene-modified immune cells are combined with reagentsto overcome the tumour induced immunosuppressive microenvironment to produce the optimal anti-tumour treatment.
CellPryme-A cell therapy enhancement is said to be synergistic with CellPryme-M.
Based on the graphic used in PTX’s most recent presentation, CellPryme-A might be considered to be the receptive Yin to the active Yang of CellPryme-M enhanced T-Cells.
CellPryme-M is a drop-in manufacturing step designed to make better T- Cells; that is, it makes T-cells more potent, more durable and better able to locate and penetrate tumours.
That’s great. But what happens next when the enhanced T-Cells penetrate the tumour and are met with a highly hostile microenvironment?
Might not a better outcome be achieved if, in addition to enhancing the T-Cells to make them more active, the tumour microenvironment could simultaneously be made more receptive?
This is why I still think that “A” might stand for Augmentation; that is, augmentation of the anti-tumour response through combination therapy aimed at reprogramming the hostile tumour microenvironment.
Regen BioPharma has announced a novel approach to using CAR-T in the treatment of solid tumours.
The company’s approach, for which a provisional patent application has been submitted, involves initially treating the hostile tumour microenvironment with cells of the innate immune system called CAR-M and CAR-NK cells. These cells are able to "normalize" the tumour microenvironment, thus allowing CAR-T cells to enter and attack the tumour.
"The company believes that taking this two-step approach – first softening up the target with CAR-M and CAR-NK cells and then bringing in the heavy artillery (CAR-T cells) will allow solid tumors to be successfully targeted by these cell therapies, thus greatly expanding the CAR-T market and ultimately saving people's lives," said Dr. David Koos, CEO and Chairman of the Company.
