CRISPR Therapeutics, MGH Partner to Develop T-Cell Cancer Therapies – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Posted: August 24, 2017 at 3:43 am

Next-Generation Immunotherapies

CRISPR Therapeutics interest in next-generation T-cell cancer immunotherapies comes as both Kite Pharma and Novartis await FDA decisions on their CAR-T immuno-oncology treatments, with the companies emerging as leading developers of CAR-T therapies. Last month, Novartis won an FDA advisory committees unanimous recommendation of approval for Novartis leukemia-fighting treatment CTL019 (tisagenlecleucel), a CAR-T therapy developed through a collaboration between the pharma giant and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania launched in 2012.

CRISPR Therapeutics drug development efforts also include partnerships with Bayer and Vertex Pharmaceuticals intended to develop CRISPR-based therapeutics in diseases with high unmet need. CRISPR Therapeutics and Bayer have formed a $335 million-plus joint venture, Casebia Therapeutics, to develop treatments aimed at curing blood disorders, blindness, and congenital heart disease.

CRISPR Therapeutics is among four companies to have licensed CRISPR technology for which a European patent was granted in March to the Regents of the University of California (UC), the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, Ph.D., a director at the Max-Planck Institute in Berlin.

The European patent holders are appealing a February 15 decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which sided with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in the bitter legal battle over who invented the gene-editing platform. The PTAB found no interference in fact between 12 patents related to CRISPR technology that list as inventor Feng Zhang, Ph.D., of the Broad, and a patent application by Dr. Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, Ph.D., of UC Berkeley.

The European patent holders have cited decisions by other countries to grant them patents for CRISPR/Cas9 in all settings, including eukaryotic cellsincluding the U.K., nearly 40 other countries that are members of the European Patent Convention, and Asia-Pacific nations such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and China.

Joining CRISPR Therapeutics in licensing the European-patented CRISPR technology are Caribou Biosciences, ERS Genomics, and Intellia Therapeutics.

Also last month, the European Patent office granted Cellectis a patent to use CRISPR in T cells, to be issued in August and valid until 2034. Were not a company thats here to block the other [companies], Cellectis chairman and CEO Andre Choulika, Ph.D., told GEN. Were here to develop products on our sidebut, if there are people that are interested in using CRISPR in T cells, were definitely open to talk to them.

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CRISPR Therapeutics, MGH Partner to Develop T-Cell Cancer Therapies - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

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