Unmet Need
· Recent technological breakthroughs have highlighted the therapeutic potential of immunotherapy (e.g., CAR-T cells) and have focused attention and efforts on developing safe and effective immunotherapy modalities.
· Despite advances in the field, there remain several challenges to both efficacy and safety of CAR-T and other immunotherapies.
· CAR-T cells have demonstrated efficacy in treating hematological tumors.
· Additional complexities and barriers exist in delivery of CAR-T cells to solid tumors.
· Therefore, there is a strong need to develop more safe and effective CAR-T-based immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, particularly solid tumors.
Value Proposition
· Allows for enhanced trafficking of adoptively transferred CAR-T cells to solid tumor sites, improving infiltration of the tumor microenvironment.
· May increase broad efficacy of CAR-T-based immunotherapy for both malignant and non-malignant disease indications.
Technology Description
· Researchers at Johns Hopkins have developed a method for improved targeting of CAR-T-based immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer and other disease.
· This approach allows for better regulation of migration of adoptively transferred cells to sites outside the bloodstream.
· This approach has demonstrated potential to enhance immune cells’ immunosurveillance and migration towards solid tumors, which are otherwise difficult to target.
Stage of Development
· 2D and 3D in vitro work is complete. Currently being studied in in vivo mouse models.
Publications
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10760159/
https://sciencecast.org/casts/cd0ybihepso7/edit
