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Cellectis' UCART-ography

How CAR T cells made from healthy donors could treat leukemia

June 25, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

A year after Pfizer Inc. threw its weight behind Cellectis S.A.'s chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell platform, the biotech has signed a three-year partnership with Weill Cornell Medical College to test whether its system for creating allogeneic CAR T cells can make a difference in acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). The hope is that the biotech's UCART technology can help treat patients who respond poorly to autologous CAR T cells or biologics because of low levels of T cells from prior chemotherapy.Cellectis developed its engineered allogeneic CAR T cells (UCART) platform to create universal donor CAR T cells that are consistently active, and avoid graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) -- which occurs when transplanted T cells attack a mismatched recipient.

The technology marries two rapidly advancing fields, by using gene editing to automatically delete the TCR in T cells from a healthy donor, that have been modified with the relevant CAR. (See Figure: Universal CAR donor)...