Prescient Therapeutics Ltd (ASX:PTX) is set to accelerate the development and commercialisation of a highly scalable version of its OmniCAR cell therapy platform following an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO).
The work plan under the agreement will focus on using Thermo Fisher’s proprietary equipment and specialised cell and gene therapy manufacturing expertise to develop a novel process of manufacturing cell therapies on the OmniCAR platform using non-viral methods.
The aim is to develop the next generation of OmniCAR cells that can be produced faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost on a platform that is suitable for tech transfer to global GMP-licensed contract development and manufacturing organisations (CDMOs) in the future.
“Eye on the future”
Prescient managing director and CEO Steven Yatomi-Clarke said: "Prescient is delighted to enter this agreement with Thermo Fisher, a world-leader in cell and gene technologies, to accelerate the development of our OmniCAR platform.
“While Prescient elected to develop its first internal OmniCAR programs using the validated approach of lentiviral transduction, we always have an eye on the future for any emerging advantages that can be incorporated into our programs whilst mitigating development risk.
“We are optimistic that this agreement with Thermo Fisher will accelerate the development of the OmniCAR platform to the point where one or more of Prescient’s internal OmniCAR programs can incorporate the advancements this agreement produces.
“Importantly, the agreement should result in an improved product and process that can be decentralised and therefore scaled with high efficiency and reproducibility. Such innovation is crucial in the clinical and eventual commercial roll-out of OmniCAR products and will facilitate third-party development of OmniCAR and the company’s ultimate vision of a patient-centric treatment ecosystem.”
Expensive CAR-T therapies
Chimeric antigen receptor or CAR-T cell therapy is a way of getting immune cells called T cells (a type of white blood cell) to fight cancer by altering the genes inside T cells in a lab so they can find and destroy cancer cells.
All CAR-T therapies approved by the FDA so far, and most CAR-T therapies in development, employ viral vectors to insert the genetic material into the immune cells.
Viral vectors are expensive, relatively inefficient and very time consuming to develop, often representing a key bottleneck and a major cost contributor to CAR-T manufacturing, according to the clinical stage oncology company.
Furthermore, viral transduction processes are highly complex manual processes, which are challenging for technology transfer, labour intensive and prone to operator variations, leading to highly variable and unpredictable results.
Yatomi-Clarke told Proactive in an interview earlier this month that Prescient is changing this script by making these living cells druggable with a unique platform called OmniCAR.
The agreement with Thermo Fisher will grant Prescient full ownership of the research outcome, which is expected to take 12 months to complete, without any cash contribution from Prescient to the project.