rns out11 Aug 2020 08:03
("Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals" or the "Company")
CAR-T Agreement with University of Pennsylvania
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc (LSE: HEMO), the biopharmaceutical group developing new therapies and treatments for blood diseases, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a Sponsored Research Agreement ("Agreement") with the University of Pennsylvania ("Penn"). The goal of the Agreement is to advance the Chimeric Antigen Receptor ("CAR") T-cells ("HEMO-CAR-T") developed by the Company toward clinical trials. The Agreement is envisaged as the first step of a larger program that aims to achieve clinical proof of concept for HEMO-CAR-T for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia ("AML").
Dr. Saar Gill, Assistant Professor of Medicine, a hematologist-oncologist physician scientist and Scientific co-Director of the Cell Therapy and Transplantation program at Penn, will serve as Principal Investigator on behalf of Penn. Dr. Gill's laboratory is part of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies ("CCI"), whose Director, Dr. Carl H. June, conducted pioneering clinical trials of genetically engineered cells including CAR-T cells in patients with HIV and diverse forms of cancer.
Dr. Vladislav Sandler, CEO & Co-Founder of Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals, commented: "This is a first and incredibly important step on a direct path to clinical trials for one of our leading product candidates. We are very pleased to be collaborating with the best and first institution that developed CAR-T technology into an approved and globally used treatment for leukemias, which has already saved so many lives. We are confident that this collaboration will dramatically accelerate the development of our CAR-T product candidate, which we believe will have a significant and positive impact in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, for which there is currently no real effective treatment."
About AML and CAR-T Therapy
AML, the most common type of acute leukemia in adults, has poor survival rates (a five-year survival rate of less than 30% in adults) and is currently treated using chemotherapy, rather than the potentially more benign and effective form of therapy being developed by Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals. The successful development of the new therapy for AML would have a major impact on treatment and survival rates for the disease.
CAR-T therapy is a treatment in which a patient's own T-cells, a type of immune cell, are modified to recognize and kill the patient's cancer cells. The procedure involves: isolating T-cells from the patient; modifying the isolated T-cells in a laboratory using a CAR gene construct (which allows the cells to recognize the patient's cancer); amplifying (growing to large numbers) the newly modified cells; and re-introducing the cells back into the patient.
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