Background

Strategies to enhance T-cell differentiation and function are critically needed in three clinical areas: 1) to improve outcomes of patients treated with cellular therapies like bone marrow transplantation; 2) to improve the efficacy of engineered T-cell immunotherapies for cancer; and 3) enable the generation of T-cells from pluripotent stem cells for immunotherapy applications.

Technology Overview

Forced supraphysiological expression of the transcription factor gene BCL11B in human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) accelerates their differentiation into mature functional T-cells and increases the output of mature T-cells in an in vitro T-cell differentiation model. Mature T-cells produced from BCL11B expressing HSPC have enhanced function compared to T-cells produced from non-BCL11B overexpressing HSPC. This technology has applications in at least three clinical areas: enhancing and expediting thymic T-cell reconstitution post bone marrow transplantation; enhancing the persistence and activity of engineered CAR T-cells for cancer; and generating adequate output of functional T-cells from pluripotent stem cells for the ex vivo generation of allogenic “off the shelf” immunotherapy T-cell products for patients.

Benefits

• Restores T cell function after HSC transplant
• Improves CAR-T function and persistence
• Increases T cell production

Applications

• Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant T Cell Recovery
• CAR-T and Engineered T cells for oncology
• Enable industrial scale manufacture of T cells, CAR-T cells and T cell progenitors

Opportunity

Looking for investors and collaborators to develop the technology.