Allogenic Advance
A step closer to an off-the-shelf CAR T cell therapy
Two-out-of-four patients in a 300 million-cell cohort, and one-out-of-three in a 100-cell cohort, achieved a complete response following treatment with CRISPR Therapeutics’ allogeneic CAR T cell therapy CTX110 (1).
The B-cell malignancy treatment was safe at the 300-million dose level and below. The only patient who received a 600 million-cell dose, after initially achieving a complete response, was hospitalized with febrile neutropenia and later died after reactivation of HHV-6 and HHV-6 encephalitis.
CTX110 is derived from healthy donor T cells, which are modified using CRISPR/Cas 9 to i) insert a CAR construct, which binds to cancer cells and activates T cells and ii) knock out the T cell receptor and MHC1, which reduces the risk of graft versus host disease and rejection.
- CRISPR Therapeutics (2020). Available at: bit.ly/2TxT5Ag
Over the course of my Biomedical Sciences degree it dawned on me that my goal of becoming a scientist didn’t quite mesh with my lack of affinity for lab work. Thinking on my decision to pursue biology rather than English at age 15 – despite an aptitude for the latter – I realized that science writing was a way to combine what I loved with what I was good at.
From there I set out to gather as much freelancing experience as I could, spending 2 years developing scientific content for International Innovation, before completing an MSc in Science Communication. After gaining invaluable experience in supporting the communications efforts of CERN and IN-PART, I joined Texere – where I am focused on producing consistently engaging, cutting-edge and innovative content for our specialist audiences around the world.
