Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals has constructed Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) programmed T cells, termed HEMO-CAR-T, for the potential treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). HEMO-CAR-T is made using Hemogenyx’s proprietary humanised monoclonal antibody against a target on the surface of AML cells.
This cutting-edge application of cell-based immune therapy represents a further product candidate for Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals in a new and exciting area of the treatment of blood cancers, and a potentially more benign and effective form of therapy that, if successful, would have a major impact on treatment and survival rates.
CAR-T therapy is a treatment in which a patient’s own T cells, a type of immune cell, are modified to recognise and kill the patient’s cancer cells. The procedure involves:
- Isolating T cells from the patient
- Modifying the isolated T cells in a laboratory using a CAR gene construct which allows the cells to recognise the patient’s cancer
- Amplifying (growing to large numbers) the newly modified cells
- Re-introducing the cells back into the patient
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals has successfully demonstrated that HEMO-CAR-T is able to programme human T cells, that is, to convert them into HEMO-CAR-T, so that they identify and destroy human AML-derived cells in vitro.