Therabest USA. Inc, Therabest Korea and Glycotope GmbH have signed an agreement to assess the clinical development of Therabest’s EiNK (enhanced iPSC-derived NK) cell therapy, TB-100, in combination with Glycotope’s immuno-cytokine, GT-00AxIL15 in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients.
NK (natural killer) cell therapies from various cell sources have demonstrated exciting results in early clinical trials and are rapidly becoming powerful alternatives to conventional treatments.
However, for solid tumors, NK cell therapies are still hampered by the low persistency and homing of NK cells. The combination of Therabest’s iPSC derived NK cell therapy TB-100 and Glycotope’s tumor-targeted immuno-cytokine GT-00AxIL15 challenges the current NK cell therapy paradigm by converging a two-component platform in which the dosage of an immuno-cytokine improves the activity of TB-100.
“We look forward to maximizing the strengths of TB-100 and GT-00AxIL15 to challenge solid tumors with enhanced cytotoxicity, specificity, persistency, and safety through this collaboration. We expect serial killing of MUC1 positive TNBC tumor cells by TB-100 redirected with GT-00AxIL15,” said Sung Chang Lee, CEO, Therabest USA and adjunct CDO, Therabest.
Suitability of combination therapies
“The collaboration underlines the attractivity of our tumor targeted immuno-cytokine GT-00AxIL15 and its suitability for combination therapies. We are excited by the potential of combining two highly innovative technologies to explore the treatment of TNBC here,” added Henner Kollenberg, CEO, Glycotope.
Therabest’s EiNK platform is a next-generation allogeneic NK cell therapy manufacturing technology that covers all processes from iPSC gene editing to iPSC-derived NK cell differentiation and proliferation.
TB-100, a highly active NK cell therapy development candidate from the EiNK platform, can recognize and remove heterogeneous cancer cells very effectively. TB-100 is an off-the-shelf and uniform cell therapy without donor-dependent batch-to-batch variation with minimal risk compared to current cell therapies.
Glycotope’s antibodies target specific tumor-associated carbohydrate structures or protein/carbohydrate combined glyco-epitopes (GlycoTargets). Targeting these specific antigens enables broad indication range, long-term treatment potential and reduced on-target/off tumor toxicity, key elements of highly potent therapies.
Based on this tumor-specificity, Glycotope’s antibodies are highly suitable for a multi-function platform approach with independent modes of action to provide a tailored therapy format for as many patients as possible.
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