From Noida lab, a next gen therapy that keeps cancer from coming back, Pg15

Key Highlights:

• Cellogen Therapeutics, a Noida-based company, is developing a novel CAR-T cell therapy designed to prevent cancer relapse by creating immune memory.
• This therapy, which functions similarly to a vaccine, is set to begin human trials soon at Christian Medical College-Vellore.
• The company is also working on "off-the-shelf" CAR-T therapies to significantly reduce treatment costs, potentially bringing them down to around Rs 8 lakh.
• Currently, two indigenous CAR-T therapies are approved in India for blood cancers: Immuneel’s Qartemti (approx. Rs 40-60 lakh) and ImmunoAct’s NexCAR19 (approx. Rs 20-40 lakh).
• Cellogen Therapeutics is further innovating to target solid tumors, specifically triple negative breast cancer, which is challenging to treat due to the absence of common receptors.

Detailed Insights:

• CAR-T cell therapy involves collecting a patient's T cells, genetically re-engineering them to recognize cancer cells, multiplying them, and infusing them back into the patient.
• The innovation by Cellogen Therapeutics includes adding a co-stimulatory domain to engineered T cells, ensuring they replicate and form a central memory, providing long-term protection against relapse.
• This approach aims to overcome limitations of first-generation CAR-T therapies that targeted cancer cells one-on-one, leading to potential relapse.
• The upcoming Phase I clinical trials will involve 18 patients with acute leukaemia and lymphoma, followed by a Phase II trial on 27 patients across multiple sites.
• "Off-the-shelf" CAR-T therapies aim to eliminate the need for patient-specific cell modification, making the treatment universally applicable and more affordable.
• For in-vivo CAR-T therapies, genetic instructions for making modified T cells are delivered directly into the body, rather than infusing pre-modified cells.
• The company is conducting animal studies for its in-vivo therapy and plans human studies next year, with a focus on triple negative breast cancer.
• Solid tumors present unique challenges for CAR-T therapy, such as markers being present on healthy cells, molecular heterogeneity within tumors, and the physical location of T cells.

Scientific/Technical Concepts Involved:

• CAR-T Cell Therapy: A type of immunotherapy where a patient's T cells are genetically modified to express Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs), enabling them to target and destroy cancer cells.
• Lentivirus: A type of retrovirus commonly used as a vector in gene therapy to deliver genetic material into host cells, including non-dividing cells.
• Co-stimulatory Domain: A component within the CAR structure that enhances T-cell activation, proliferation, and persistence, crucial for effective and long-lasting anti-tumor responses.
• Triple Negative Breast Cancer: An aggressive form of breast cancer characterized by the absence of estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and HER2 protein, making it unresponsive to common targeted therapies.