AdAlta Ltd (ASX:1AD) has presented a progress report with ‘proof of principle’ data showing its i-body platform can be incorporated into Carina Biotech’s CAR-T cells and achieve targeted cell killing.
AdAlta’s chair Dr Paul MacLeman and CEO & managing director Dr Tim Oldham made the presentation at today's Annual General Meeting and incorporated milestones for the next calendar year.
In August this year, AdAlta and Carina Biotech announced a collaboration to develop precision-engineered, i-body enabled chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells as cancer therapeutics.
Under the collaboration agreement, AdAlta will discover i-bodies for up to five solid tumour targets (antigens) that Carina Biotech will then use with its proprietary CAR-T technologies to develop CAR-T cell therapy products.
Investors appear to have responded positively to the proof of principle presentation, raising AdAlta’s share price as much as 6.25% intraday to $0.085 a share with a market cap of 20.88 million at opening.
The i-body enabled CAR-T cell is expected to bring improved targeting, better penetration and treatment persistence when used to treat solid tumours.
AdAlta undertook preliminary proof of principle studies, using an AdAlta i-body bound to an undisclosed target and incorporated into three different CAR designs, which were successfully engineered into T cells using Carina technology to create three different CAR-T cells.
The studies also tested the ability of these CAR-T cells to kill target cells expressing the target antigen. Key findings of these proof of principle experiments were:
- 97% of T cells in culture incorporated the i-body CAR to become i-CAR-T cells which then expanded during manufacturing at the rates expected;
- i-body enabled CAR-T cells were capable of in vitro killing a cell line engineered to overexpress the i-body’s target, but did not kill the original cells; and
- i-body enabled CAR-T cells were capable of in vitro killing of two colorectal cancer cell lines and (less effectively) a glioblastoma (brain) cancer cell line known to express the i-body’s target.
Exciting potential
Dr Oldham commented: “We are very pleased to share the proof of principle data that so excited us about the potential of this collaboration. We look forward to first experimental results on agreed targets under the collaboration in the first half of next year.”
AdAlta was also recently issued two further patents, Singapore Patent 11201705583X and a second Australian Patent 2019203511, protecting the company’s i-body platform.
The patents protect AdAlta’s lead product, AD-214, sequences similar to this, and pharmaceutical compositions containing these i-body sequences and their uses in therapeutic and diagnostic applications, including Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), the lead indication for which AD-214 is being developed.
The new patents expire on January 8, 2036 and build on AdAlta’s already extensive patent portfolio already obtained in Australia (2017), USA (2020 and 2021) and Japan (2021), with additional applications pending in Europe, China, India and other markets.
About AdAlta
AdAlta Limited is a clinical-stage drug development company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. The company is using its proprietary i-body technology platform to solve challenging drug targeting problems and generate a promising new class of single domain antibody protein therapeutics with the potential to treat some of today’s most challenging medical conditions.