Regen BioPharma has initiated a preclinical development program to create the first cord blood-based cancer immunotherapeutic product, leveraging Regen’s NR2F6 immunological checkpoint. The goal is to create the first universal donor cellular immunotherapy.
Regen is centering on gene silencing therapy for the treatment of cancer as well as telomeres, small molecule therapies and stem cell treatments for aplastic anemia. The biotechnology pharmaceutical is currently working to identify undervalued regenerative medicine applications in the immunotherapy and stem cell space.
Regen submitted a provisional patent application for the creation of cord blood derived killer cells, with a gene-silencing potentiated anti-cancer activity. It hopes the product under development will be a “universal donor” cellular immunotherapy that can easily be shipped frozen to any needed location and doesn’t require complex cellular manipulations by the receiving institution.
“We are pleased to announce expansion of our NR2F6 gene-silencing technologies to the area of universal donor cellular products,” said Regen President and CSO Harry Lander, Ph.D., in a press release.
Lander said ucVax leverages experimental data gathered from the company’s ongoing work in the development of dCellVax and tCellVax, both of which are personalized cellular immunotherapies.
“By using cord blood cells as the starting population for generation of ucVax, we overcome the problem of immune rejection by the patient receiving the therapy, thus potentially allowing the therapy to be used by everyone in need,” he said.
Cutting-edge cancer cellular immunotherapies require the extraction of patients’ blood cells, the manipulation of these cells outside the body, and re-infusion procedures. These approaches result in costly disadvantages for personalized cellular products and increase the need for highly trained staff and specialized facilities for the proper manipulation of the cells.
“Developing a universal donor immunotherapy will substantially reduce costs of clinical implementation and allow for wide access to treatment, including at institutions that do not possess cellular processing abilities. To our knowledge, ‘universal donor’ cellular immunotherapies have not been developed to date,” said Regen Chairman and CEO David Koos, Ph.D. “We believe ucVax will possess both therapeutic and commercial advantages as compared to other immunotherapies.”
