To produce effective, more affordable cellular immunotherapies for solid and blood-based cancers
Incorporated in 2018, CytoMed is a biotech company spun off from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s leading research and development agency in the public sector, and focused on translating its proprietary technologies into cell-based immunotherapy cancer treatments. The development of these novel technologies was inspired by the clinical success of chimeric antigen receptor-modified T (CAR-T) cells in treating hematological malignancies and introduces solutions for the clinical limitations and commercial challenges inherent in extrapolating the CAR-T principle into treatments for solid tumors.
The development of CD19-targeting CAR-T cells to treat B-cell malignancies underscores cellular immunotherapy’s increasingly essential role in cancer care. However, the therapies in use today face several challenges that include: reliance on a patient’s limited cell quality and quantity, the lack of “safe” surface cancer antigens and their recognition system, and the limited success rate of relying on a single antigen-targeting strategy. Applying the current CAR-T principle when treating other types of cancers, particularly solid tumors, can be challenging. To this end, we have established two novel, patent-pending patient blood cell-independent therapies to manufacture “off-the-shelf” cell-based cancer immunotherapies: one treatment innovating the CAR-T cell approach and another generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and developing them into cellular therapeutics using our proprietary technologies.
• Donor blood cell-based technology (CTM-N2D therapy* & CTM-N2D therapy)
• iPSC-derived technology (iPSC-γδ gdNKT therapy*)
Fn: * patent-pending therapies
These therapies exploit the multiple-antigen recognition systems of both natural killer (NK) cells and γδ T cells and may be used to recognize and treat a broad range of cancers.
The cellular therapies will be manufactured for clinical trials at a cGMP facility in Johor, Malaysia (near Singapore), in a facility built in accordance with the international PIC/S GMP Standards. The company will directly oversee manufacturing with a well-trained, professional team conducting all essential GMP activities, including manufacture, QC, QA, and documentation.
The leading CAR-γδ T cell technology, CTM-N2D therapy, is now a clinical trial-ready product set to begin its Phase I trial.