Cartherics’ CEO Alan Trounson speaks at the  BIO KOREA 2021 International Convention

By Leigh Dayton

11 June 2021

Alan Trounson joined a day-long discussion on advances in regenerative medicine. The virtual event brought together the world’s leading experts.

At the session on emerging immuno-oncology, Trounson told delegates that Cartherics believes its novel CAR-T and CAR-NK cells have great potential for killing solid tumours like ovarian, gastric, prostate and breast cancer.

Although the company is developing products for both solid and blood cancers, Trounson presented details of its ‘off-the-shelf’ allogeneic stem cell immunotherapy for ovarian cancer.

Very simply, Cartherics’ technology consists of gene-editing iPSC, establishing stable clones, then deriving potentially limitless numbers of highly functional CAR-iNK cells for ovarian cancer therapies.

Read Trounson’s abstract………

Development of Regenerative Medicine Industrialization through Translational and Clinical Research

Development of an off the shelf stem cell immunotherapy for ovarian cancer

Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from triple homozygous umbilical cord blood donors provides a unique opportunity to large-scale develop compatible derivatives for transplantation in regenerative medicine and cancer therapy. These haplotype iPSCs can be gene-edited and clonally derived to produce high purity genetically enhanced products. We have used this platform to derive natural killer (iNK) cells and T (iT) cells with high cancer killing capacity in vitro and in vivo. We have targeted ovarian cancer but our chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) is an adenocarcinoma capable of destroying pancreatic, gastric, small cell lung, prostate, etc. cancers. The value of having cell products with compatibility for the major HLA types to avoid graft versus host disease, CARs inserted into safe harbour sites and gene knockouts that efficiently remove inhibitory gene functions, is a valuable platform in regenerative medicine.