Breakdown of T cell therapies deployed to treat autoimmune diseases by Jeffrey C. Martin

Jeffrey C. Martin, Founder of Oncoleader, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“T cell therapies are now being deployed to treat autoimmune diseases. Here’s a quick breakdown.

T cell therapies, particularly CAR-T cells, have displayed potent anti-cancer activity against blood-based cancers, especially CD19+ B cell malignancies.

CAR T cells are basically highly cytotoxic T cells, designed to seek out and destroy any cell that expresses a particular protein on its surface – in the case of CD19+ malignancies, the target is CD19.

Once they’re inject into a cancer patient, they destroy all the CD19+ B cells. Easy-peasy… (it’s not really all that easy, but you get the point).

But hang on…hyperactive B cells (and T cells) are also the cause of several autoimmune diseases…

So, wouldn’t a patient suffering from an autoimmune disease also benefit from the directed killing of B cells? Couldn’t scientists design CAR T cells to seek out and kill the B cells that are responsible for the autoimmune disease?

YEP!

Several CAR T biotech companies have taken aim at autoimmune diseases and are now deploying these therapies to treat autoimmune diseases.

There seems to be three main approaches:

1. CAR T cells directed towards an entire immune cell population such as CD19+ B cells.

2. Chimeric auto-antigen receptor (CAAR) T cells – these cells will find and kill the immune cells that are ‘personally’ responsible for causing the autoimmunity.

3. CAR/TCR Treg cells – these cells use their CAR (or synthetic T cell) receptor to traffic to the site of the autoimmune reaction, and suppress the local immune activity.

I’ve compiled a list of the companies, their products, and the diseases they target below!

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• Cabaletta Bio is developing a CD19-specific CAR T called CABA-201 that is being used to treat Systemic Lupus erythematosus the most common type of Lupus.
• Kynerna Therapeutics has also developed a CD19 CAR that they are deploying against several autoimmune diseases including myasthenia gravis and lupus nephritis.
• Sonoma Biotherapeutics and their CAR Treg platform SBT-77-7101 are fighting rheumatoid arthritis and hidradenitis suppurativa.
• Sonoma also just announced a $120 million partnership with Renergon to develop CAR Treg cells for the treatment of IBD and Crohn’s disease.
• Abata Therapeutics is generating two CAR Treg platforms: i) ABA-101 for the treatment of progressive Multiple Sclerosis, and ii) ABA-201 for Type I Diabetes.
• GentiBio’s GNTI-122 is a CAR Treg platform for the treatment of new onset Type I Diabetes.
• Deeks and Abedi are collaborating to develop a CAR T cell therapy for the treatment of HIV Source
• for most of the information on the various therapies being developed is linked in the comments.”

Source: Jeffrey C. Martin/LinkedIn

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