Enhanced NK cell function and expansion for immunotherapy

癌症免疫疗法的使用现在已经进入主流肿瘤学，这是两个主要创新的结果：检查点抑制剂疗法和靶向肿瘤细胞的T细胞工程（CAR-T细胞）。两者都取得了一定的成功，但只有少数患者有反应。它们对实体瘤的影响有限，但可能导致致命或高度破坏性的免疫反应，如细胞因子风暴和移植物抗宿主病（GvHD）。我们公司开发了一种技术，可以生产对癌细胞具有很强毒性的人类自然杀伤（NK）细胞，并可以转移到患者体内治疗癌症。我们已经开发出新颖的专有技术，使我们能够制造人类NK细胞，利用NK细胞生物学来清除癌细胞。NK细胞在我们的身体中扮演着既定的角色，识别癌细胞并在它们变得危险之前摧毁它们。事实上，NK细胞对癌细胞的毒性更大，比其他现有的细胞疗法更安全。NK细胞疗法正在多项临床试验中进行测试，但目前的生产方法效率极低，导致输注细胞毒性低的“耗尽”细胞。如果这些治疗方法要更广泛地提供给患者，就迫切需要新的生产和规模化工艺。该项目将为我们专有的NK细胞疗法开发新的自动化生产和规模化工艺，这些疗法在广泛的癌症中具有潜力。该项目将在我们的卵巢癌候选疗法的背景下进行，目前卵巢癌的10年生存率预后不良。卵巢癌中NK细胞的存在通常与患者的良好预后相关，并且卵巢癌的生物学表明它可能对“武器化”NK细胞高度敏感。如果成功，该项目将使一种高度创新的疗法能够大规模生产，并广泛提供给需要它的患者。

The use of cancer immunotherapy has now entered mainstream oncology as a consequence of two main innovations: checkpoint inhibitor therapy and the engineering of T-cells to target tumour cells (CAR-T cells). Both have shown some success but only a minority of patients respond. They have limited impact on solid tumours and can cause fatal or highly damaging immune reactions such as cytokine storms and Graft vs Host Disease (GvHD).Our company has developed a technology to produce human Natural Killer (NK) cells that are very toxic towards cancer cells and can be transferred into patients to treat cancer. We have developed novel and proprietary techniques that allow us to make human NK-cells that exploit NK-cell biology to clear cancer cells. NK-cells have an established role in our bodies, recognising cancer cells and destroying them before they become dangerous. In fact, NK-cells are more toxic towards cancer cells and are safer than other existing cell therapies.NK-cell therapy is being tested in multiple clinical trials, however current production methods are highly inefficient and result in transfusion of "exhausted" cells that have low cytotoxicity. New manufacturing and scale up processes are urgently needed if these treatments are to be made more widely available to patients.This project will develop new automated production and scale up processes for our proprietary NK-cell therapies, which have potential across a wide range of cancers. This project will be undertaken in the context of our candidate therapy for ovarian cancer, which currently has a poor prognosis for 10-year survival. The presence of NK-cells within an ovarian cancer is usually associated with a good prognosis for the patient and the biology of ovarian cancer suggests that it can be highly susceptible to "weaponised" NK cells. If successful, this project will enable a highly innovative therapy to be produced at scale and made widely available to the patients who need it.