Business
Fate Therapeutics Features Multiple Novel Approaches to Eliminate Conditioning Chemotherapy for Off-the-shelf, iPSC-derived Cell Therapies at 2022 ASH Annual Meeting
Next-generation Engineering Strategies Designed to Resist Host Immune Cell Rejection Show Enhanced Functionality and Persistence of iPSC-derived Cells in
About this update from Fate Therapeutics, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"Next-generation Engineering Strategies Designed to Resist Host Immune Cell Rejection Show Enhanced Functionality and Persistence of iPSC-derived Cells in Preclinical Allogeneic Models\nSAN DIEGO, Dec. 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: FATE), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of programmed cellular immunotherapies for patients with cancer, presented preclinical data of several novel strategies designed to enable administration of off-the-shelf cell-based cancer immunotherapies without conditioning chemotherapy at the 64th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. Conditioning chemotherapy, commonly used throughout the field of cell therapy, often results in hematologic toxicities, can limit the potential for administration of multiple doses, and can prohibit adoption as part of early-line treatment. Novel strategies to reduce or eliminate the need for conditioning chemotherapy presented by the Company at ASH include arming iPSC-derived effector cells with an alloimmune defense receptor, which selectively targets and eliminates 41BB-expressing alloreactive host immune cells to promote expansion, persistence, and anti-tumor activity; the genetic ablation of CD38 in combination with CD38-targeted monoclonal antibody therapy, which uniquely targets and depletes CD38-expressing activated host immune cells; and the combined genetic ablation of the adhesion molecules CD54 and CD58, which reduces immune synapse formation resulting in host immune cell evasion. “Eliminating the need for conditioning chemotherapy has the potential to significantly improve the safety and clinical benefit of cell therapies, and enable their use in a significantly broader population of patients with hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. Our next-generation iPSC product platform seeks to create the ideal off-the-shelf cell therapy, which would enhance functional persistence and anti-tumor activity while reducing or eliminating the need for conditioning chemotherapy to deplete host lymphocytes,” said Bob Valamehr, Ph.D., Chief Research and Development Officer of Fate Therapeutics. “We are developing multiple promising strategies that can only be realized through precise multiplexed-engineering of cells, and we believe our leading iPSC product platform is uniquely pos...