In an important step toward commercialisation, Imugene Ltd (ASX:IMU, OTC:IUGNF) has presented pre-clinical data to the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy’s Annual Meeting demonstrating anti-tumour activity in vivo (in a live model) of its onCARlytics technology in combination with Eureka Therapeutics, Inc.’s ARTEMIS® cell receptor platform.
The data – which was revealed as a poster presentation – investigated the effect of the combination of IMU’s onCARlytic virus and Artemis CD19 T-Cells in hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) tumours.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) occurs most often in people with chronic liver diseases, such as cirrhosis caused by hepatitis B or hepatitis C infection.
It’s the most common liver cancer and the sixth-most common cancer worldwide.
An innovative solution
There are currently very few systemic therapies for patients with advanced HCC in addition to traditional treatments, which include ablation (burning or freezing a tumour), surgical resection (surgical removal), and liver transplantation.
While CD19-targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy like the Artemis CD19 T-Cells have demonstrated very positive clinical outcomes in blood cancers, solid tumours present addition challenges, including an immunosuppressive microenvironment, on-target off-tumour toxicity, and antigen heterogeneity.
This translates to significantly reduced efficacy when using CAR T cells as therapy against solid tumours such as HCC.
The combination of IMU’s onCARlytic virus with ARTEMIS® T cells could potentially provide a solution.
ARTEMIS® T cells differentiate from CAR T cells with lower cytokine release syndrome (CRS, a type of inflammation response) risks, better tumour infiltration and higher T cell persistence in pre-clinical studies, making them ideal cell therapy candidates for solid tumours.