Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cells (CAR-Ts) have emerged as a key breakthrough in the treatment of B-cell malignancies, with long term remission and cure in previously end-stage patients. These unprecedented clinical responses have clearly transformed the clinical landscape, with several commercial CAR-T products being available as standard-of-care in EU countries.
However, the current commercial production paradigm by pharmaceutical companies poses significant challenges to rapid implementation. Specifically, products have long lead times, thereby, precluding severely ill patients from eligibility for this life-saving therapy. Further, centralized production poses challenges to rapid innovation and has significant environmental impact. Moreover, such centralized production of commercial CAR-T products has prohibitively high costs that strain the healthcare systems in Europe, even in the currently limited indication areas for which it is approved. Indeed, some countries do not include CAR-Ts in their public standard-of-care. Therefore, efforts currently focus on development of academic point-of-care (PoC) production as alternative, which is also the primary focus of InnoCAR-T.
Furthermore, even for the successful story of B cell lymphoma long-term clinical responses are restricted to ~50% of patients, whereas for most other types of cancers clear CAR-T breakthroughs are still lacking. This is due to additional challenges that need to be overcome for effective CAR-T therapy, including tumour micro-environmental immunosuppression that results in the shut-down of CAR-T in the tumour lesion.
InnoCAR-T’s science objective is to use breakthrough science to develop next-generation academic CAR-T products that aim to address these bottlenecks and deliver curative CAR-T-based tumour immunity with optimal and affordable care. Specifically, we will 1. develop flexible, scalable and rapid CAR-T manufacturing capacity for academia and 2. develop various immunomodulatory therapeutic approaches for the design of next-generation CAR-T formulations to overcome immunosuppression.
With these advances, InnoCAR-T aims to drive the implementation of PoC CAR-T therapy in Europe.
