Our Allogeneic Approach
We are leveraging the power of a healthy donor’s non-gene edited γδ T
cells to help patients better fight a variety of cancer targets.
We are leveraging the power of a healthy donor’s non-gene edited γδ T
cells to help patients better fight a variety of cancer targets.
γδ cells are a subset of T cells that carry TCRs composed of γ and δ chains, in contrast to the more abundant traditional T cells that express α and β TCR chains
Although relatively smaller in numbers, γδ T cells can be isolated and expanded from healthy donors in sufficient quantities for therapeutic applications
γδ T cells are naturally involved in early phases of immune responses and primed to penetrate peripheral tissues, including cancers
γδ T cells harbor innate killing abilities, which can potentiate their anti-tumor activity
γδ T cells are unlikely to induce graft-vs-host disease because the activation of their TCR is not MHC restricted
Master Cell Banks created from healthy donor γδ T cells can generate enough γδ TAC T cells to treat likely more than 50 patients
We have a unique engineering strategy for developing TAC γδ T cells at commercial scale. To facilitate GMP readiness, we employ four key initiatives: identification of optimal healthy cell donors, culture optimization to obtain a high concentration of γδ cells, bioassay development to validate TAC-γδ cell products, and process optimization in bioreactors.
In developing a consistent process, we seek to generate highly pure and potent master cell banks for highly efficacious TAC products.
In preclinical studies, allogeneic TAC-γδ cells have demonstrated an enhanced ability to eliminate Claudin 18.2-positive cancer cells. Results show that TAC-γδ cells performed comparably to our autologous standard TAC T-cells approach at a parallel development stage.
We may pursue other novel targets using an allogeneic approach, including Claudin 18.2, GPC3 and GUCY2C.