On June 10, 2022 Umoja Biopharma, Inc., an immuno-oncology company pioneering off-the-shelf, integrated therapeutics that reprogram immune cells to treat patients with solid and hematologic malignancies, and TreeFrog Therapeutics, a biotechnology company aimed at making safer, more efficient and more affordable cell therapies based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), reported that they have entered into a collaboration to evaluate Umoja’s iPSC platform within TreeFrog’s C-Stem technology for scalable expansion and immune cell differentiation in bioreactors (Press release, Umoja Biopharma, JUN 10, 2022, View Source [SID1234615881]).
Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:
Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing
Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!
"Together, the successful pairing of Umoja’s RACR engineered iPS cells and TreeFrog’s C-Stem technology could overcome several challenges facing ex vivo allogeneic therapies," said Ryan Larson, Ph.D., Vice President and Head of Translational Science at Umoja. "Two major industry-wide challenges include the ability to scale iPSC-based culture while maintaining cell health, quality, and efficient immune cell differentiation. TreeFrog’s biomimetic C-Stem technology is the perfect complementary development platform for our RACR technology, a pairing which could result in controlled, efficient iPSC expansion and differentiation into immune cells, with improved yields and quality. In addition to enhancing the differentiation and yield of immune cells within the manufacturing process, our RACR system should bring therapeutic benefit to patients, allowing for safe in vivo engraftment and persistence of tumor-killing cells without requirements for toxic lymphodepleting chemotherapy."
Umoja is developing an engineered iPSC platform that addresses many challenges associated with ex vivo cell therapy manufacturing, including limited scalability and manufacturing complexity. Umoja’s iPSCs are engineered with a synthetic rapamycin-activated cytokine receptor (RACR) to drive differentiation to, and expansion of innate cytotoxic lymphoid cells, including but not limited to natural killer (NK) cells in the absence of exogenous cytokines and feeder cells. TreeFrog’s proprietary C-Stem technology relies on the high-throughput encapsulation (>1,000 capsules/second) of hiPSCs within biomimetic alginate shells, which promote in vivo-like exponential growth and protect cells from external stress. In 2021, C-Stem was demonstrated to allow for unprecedented iPSC expansion in 10L bioreactors, while preserving stem cell quality. Also enabling direct in-capsule iPSC differentiation, C-Stem constitutes a scalable, end-to-end, and GMP-compatible manufacturing platform for iPSC-derived cell therapies.
Frédéric Desdouits, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer at TreeFrog added "Our primary goal is to bring the benefits of the C-Stem technology to patients as fast as possible, either through in-house programs or strategic alliances with cell therapy leaders. Partnering with Umoja is an important step forward in immuno-oncology. Besides scale-up and cell quality, the in vivo persistence of allogeneic therapies remains a critical challenge in the industry. We believe Umoja’s platform will allow for safer and more efficient allogeneic cell therapies in immuno-oncology. We look forward to rapidly advancing this joint approach to clinic and contributing to the future of off-the-shelf cancer treatments."