Mustang Bio inks licensing pact with Mayo Clinic for novel CAR T technology
Massachusetts, August 14, 2021:
Mustang Bio, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, announced that the company has executed an exclusive license agreement with Mayo Clinic for a novel technology that may be able to transform the administration of chimeric antigen receptor engineered T cell (CAR T) therapies and potentially be used as an off-the-shelf therapy.
The technology, developed by Larry R. Pease, Ph.D., principal investigator and former director of the Center for Immunology and Immune Therapies at Mayo Clinic, is a new platform to administer CAR T therapy using a two-step approach. First, a peptide is administered to the patient to drive the proliferation of the patient’s resident T cells. This is followed by the administration of a viral CAR construct directly into the lymph nodes of the patient. In turn, the viral construct infects the activated T cells and effectively forms CAR T cells in vivo in the patient. Successful implementation may lead to an off-the-shelf product with no need to isolate and expand patient T cells ex vivo.
“We are excited by the possibilities that this novel technology has to offer given our ongoing development of CAR T cell therapies in hematologic and solid tumor cancers,” said Manuel Litchman, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Mustang. “The potential use of this technology to facilitate how these treatments are delivered to patients can lead to earlier treatment post diagnosis, and using an off-the-shelf therapy may reduce the cost of care, all of which would help bring more innovative treatments to a broader base of patients in need.”
Preclinical proof-of-concept has been established and the ongoing development of this technology will take place at Mayo Clinic.
“The immune cells are activated in vivo using the natural methods employed by the body to deal with infection rather than the artificial activation used to manufacture traditional CAR T cells ex vivo,” said Dr. Pease. “This could potentially reduce the substantial toxicities that are characteristic of traditional CAR T therapy.”
Mustang plans to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for a multicenter phase 1 clinical trial once a lead construct has been identified. PharmaBiz