BioCentury
ARTICLE | Clinical News

UCSF, Cell Design using synNotch to produce therapeutics

September 29, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

In a paper published online Thursday in Cell, University of California San Francisco researchers showed T cells engineered to express a synthetic Notch (synNotch) receptor could be programmed to produce a diverse array of therapeutic agents in the presence of disease-specific molecular cues. Cell Design Labs Inc. (San Francisco, Calif.) has licensed the technology from UCSF.

SynNotch receptors are altered versions of Notch cell surface proteins composed of modular, custom-selected extracellular sensing and intracellular response domains. In a cell expressing synNotch receptors, extracellular domain binding to a target ligand triggers expression of a pre-specified gene or set of genes. In a previous Cell study from the same laboratory, synNotch receptors were used to induce T cell expression of chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) only in the presence of specific tumor antigens (see BioCentury Extra, January 29). ...