President and chief executive officer, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals

Rick Fair

“The next 6 months are huge for Bellicum. We have our first data on BPX-603 from the phase 1 study coming in the fourth quarter of this year, we have our first data in prostate cancer with BPX-601 coming in the first quarter of next year. We’re focusing on continued execution of these studies, we really want to get through dose escalation, we want to optimize the dose and schedule of both the cell therapy and the small molecule to give patients the best chance of doing well.”

Bellicum Pharmaceuticals is developing technologies such as their GoCAR technology and their CaspaCIDe technology to make chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies more customizable, efficacious, and safe for patients with solid tumors.

Their proprietary GoCAR technology periodically reactivate the CAR T cells via infusion of a proprietary small molecule, rimiducid via iMC co-activation technology. The co-activation promotes CAR T-cell activation, proliferation, and persistence, and also yields greater anti-tumor effects. The newer caspaCIDe technology represses the CAR T therapy and can very quickly initiate apoptosis for all CAR T-cells. If serious adverse events occur, this safety switch efficiently stops them in their tracks.

Bellicum’s programs incorporate these technologies. Their lead program, BPX-601, utilizes the GoCAR technology to treat solid tumors expressing prostate stem cell antigen and is currently recruiting in a phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT02744287). Their second-generation CAR T product, BPX-603, incorporates both the GoCAR iMC technology as well as the caspaCIDe safety switch and is currently recruiting in its own phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT04650451) for HER2+ solid tumors.

 spoke with Rick Fair, president and chief executive officer, to learn more about Bellicum’s lead programs in development. He discussed BPX-603, BPX-601, and future plans the company has for these programs.

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Rick Fair, president and chief executive officer, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, discussed the company’s programs and future plans. 

Developing Safer, Next-Generation CAR T-Cell Therapies 

“Bellicum’s approach is really to leverage differentiated molecular switches and cell signaling technologies to lead to more potent and hopefully more powerful and efficacious cell therapies, while at the same time making them more controllable, to hopefully make them safer as well. We do that through our molecular switch platform we call GoCAR. And that's what we're trying to contribute to the space.”

Bellicum Pharmaceuticals is aiming to make chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies more customizable to make sure they are both efficacious and safe for patients with solid tumors. Two technologies they’ve developed to help do so are their GoCAR technology and their CaspaCIDe technology.

The GoCAR technology uses iMC co-activation technology to periodically reactivate the CAR T cells via infusion of a proprietary small molecule, rimiducid. This ‘accelerator’ leads to greater CAR T-cell activation, proliferation, and persistence, as well as greater anti-tumor effects. Their caspaCIDe technology acts as a ‘brake’ and can very quickly initiate apoptosis for all CAR T-cells, effectively stopping serious adverse events in their tracks.

Bellicum’s lead program, BPX-601, utilizes the GoCAR technology to treat solid tumors expressing prostate stem cell antigen, while their second-generation CAR T product, BPX-603, incorporates both the GoCAR iMC technology as well as the caspaCIDe safety switch. Both BPX-601 (NCT02744287) and BPX-603 (NCT04650451) are currently recruiting in phase 1/2 clinical trials.

 spoke with Rick Fair, president and chief executive officer, to learn more about Bellicum’s technologies. He discussed the science behind the GoCAR technology, iMC activation, and the caspaCIDe safety switch.

Rick Fair, president and chief executive officer, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, discussed the company’s GoCAR, iMC, and caspaCIDe technologies. 

Rick Fair

Articles

Developing Safer, Next-Generation CAR T-Cell Therapies

Developing Customizable CAR T-Cell Therapies