New Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) Format for Developing Improved Adoptive Cell Therapies

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is an attractive new therapeutic approach for treating various cancers. ACT has recently demonstrated a high degree of efficacy when treating patients with hematological malignancies. However, to date, no effective Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR) T cell therapy exists for solid tumors.
Researchers in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) have created a new CAR format that is available for licensing and further co-development. This new format uses a specific promoter and signal peptide in a specific order allowing for increased efficiency of CAR T therapy. The inventors found that there was an increased therapeutic effect when using their proprietary (anti-glypican 3 [GPC3]) hYP7 antibody in this format. 
Additionally, the inventors are exploring the use of this new CAR T format in conjunction with other antibodies against multiple other cancer antigens, including mesothelin and glypican 2 (GPC2). 

Competitive Advantages:

• The novel technology (new CAR format) can increase therapeutic effectiveness of CAR T therapies for patients with solid tumor cancers (i.e., hepatocellular carcinoma or pancreatic cancer) where no long term or effective therapy currently exists
• The novel technology (new CAR format) when used for immunotherapy in preclinical in vivo studies is already known to have a greater decrease in tumor size compared to those mice treated with other CAR formats

Commercial Applications:

• Treating cancer patients eligible for ACT
• Treating patients with diseases associated with expression of GPC3, GPC2, and other tumor antigens (e.g. mesothelin)