Prescient Therapeutics enters strategic collaboration with renowned US cancer centre

Prescient Therapeutics (ASX: PTX) has entered a strategic collaboration with a renowned US cancer centre to create “best-in-class” adaptable CAR-T cell therapies to treat blood cancers.

Under the collaboration, Prescient’s next generation CAR-T therapy OmniCAR-T will be combined with an undisclosed proprietary binder that The University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Centre has discovered.

Traditional CAR-T therapies involve isolating the T cells belonging to a cancer patient and inserting new genetic material into them. This makes them express a new chimeric antigen receptor that recognises cancer cells.

The altered cells are then re-infused into the patient and can target and kill cancer cells.

Prescient’s OmniCAR-T technology is a universal immune receptor platform that enables multi-antigen targeting with a single cell product as well as controlling T cell activity.

As a result, the technology can create on-demand T-cell activity post infusion and allows the CAR-T to be directed to numerous different tumour antigens.

Broader cancer killing spectrum

MD Anderson has designed the coevolution of Leukemia and Immunity Post Stem Cell transplant (ECLIPSE) platform, which has a broad sample library.

The broad sample library enables research to identify unique binders that may allow for targeting blood cancer cells in a way that is distinct to CAR-T therapies.

According to Prescient, these binders are T cell receptor (TCR)-like antibodies, which find cancer cells and target proteins on the surface and the inside of a tumour cell.

Prescient likened the process to an immune matching mechanism that is used during organ donor selection for transplantation.

“A key challenge in developing effective cancer therapies is identifying targets on the surface of these tumour cells, and then being able to bind to these targets,” Prescient senior vice president of scientific affairs Dr Rebecca Lim explained.

“This is where the ECLIPSE platform has yielded some valuable breakthroughs in target identification and creating unique binders to these novel targets – targets that until now have been hidden inside the cancer cells.”

Dr Lim said a challenge that is faced in treatment most cancers is the heterogeneity of the antigen expression that also changes over time.

“This is where the power of the OmniCAR platform comes to the fore.”

“OmniCAR enables novel TCR-like binders to be uniquely combined with Prescient’s binders to result in a multi-valent and controllable cell therapy capable of addressing a much broader array of blood cancer cells in order to get the best chance of optimal patient outcomes.”

Dr Lim added the process allows multiple targets to be addressed over time if a patient relapses.

The combined technologies also have the potential to boost efficacy, while having a broader cancer killing spectrum.