Dan Shelly, PhD, on Advantages of Multi-Targeted OmniCAR Platform

“We can show that when you add targeting ligand, you can get CAR activity that looks like the sigmoidal dose response curve of a small molecule, but for CAR activity, so that's really remarkable. We've also been able to show that we can arm, unarm, and rearm the cells. We've been able to show in human glioblastoma cells, we can co-culture cells that express either HER2 or EGFR, we can come in with a fully armed EGFR omniCAR T-cell, and we can kill just the EGFR-expressing cells and not the HER2 ones. Then, 20 hours later, which we hypothesize would be enough time for receptor turnover and proliferation, we just add a HER2 targeting ligand. At that point, we stop killing the EGFR cells, and we start killing the HER2 cells.”

Presicent Therapeutics’universal immune receptor chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) platform called OmniCAR is a controllable, multi-antigen targeting platform using a single cell product. The strategy, developed at University of Pennsylvania, consists of a decoupled antigen receptor and T-cell signaling domain. OmniCAR also uses a SpyTag/SpyCatcher binding system developed at Oxford University.

Dan Shelly, vice president, business development and alliances, Prescient Therapeutics, presented preclinical data on the OmniCAR platform at the World Oncology Cell Therapy Congress (WOCTC) held April 25-26 in Boston, Massachusetts. CGTLive spoke with Shelly to learn more about its advantages in manufacturing, durability of response, safety, and regulatory processes. He also explained the various parts of the OmniCAR construct, including the SpyTag and SpyCatcher binding domain.

Click here to read more coverage of WOCTC 2023.

REFERENCE

Shelly D. Post-infusion controllable CAR therapies with a novel universal immune receptor. Presented at: WOCTC; April 25-26; Boston, Massachusetts.