Cel­lec­tis, ris­ing star Al­lo­gene de­sign an 'all-in-one' CAR con­struct with em­bed­ded safe­ty switch as the new part­ners an­gle for the clin­ic

When Arie Bellde­grun and David Chang bagged all of Pfiz­er’s off-the-shelf CAR-T ther­a­pies, they high­light­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tion pro­gram with Cel­lec­tis that po­ten­tial­ly puts Al­lo­gene Ther­a­peu­tics on a path to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. Two months lat­er, the French biotech is fol­low­ing up with a safer, next-gen­er­a­tion chimeric anti­gen re­cep­tor con­struct now po­si­tioned for the clin­ic.

In a pa­per pub­lished in Sci­en­tif­ic Re­ports to­day, Cel­lec­tis re­ports an all-in-one CAR ar­chi­tec­ture that com­bines can­cer-killing po­ten­cy, a “sui­cide switch” for safe­ty, as well as pu­rifi­ca­tion and de­tec­tion ca­pac­i­ties. Dubbed Cu­biCAR, the mol­e­cule was shown to be “ef­fi­cient­ly and ro­bust­ly” de­plet­ed in the pres­ence of Rit­ux­an (rit­ux­imab) both in vit­ro and in vi­vo.

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