Organ transplantation requires drugs to reduce the chance of the body rejecting the donor organ, but these immunosuppressive therapies also increase the risk of infection. This risk persists because anti-rejection therapy must be taken for life. Quell Therapeutics aims to provide an alternative: design immune cells to prevent organ rejection in cell therapy.The biotech company is conducting its first clinical trial, Monday Announced $156 million To support this research.
Quell’s therapy in London is made by engineering regulatory T cells, commonly called Tregs. In the immune system, T cells are always ready to deal with invading pathogens, which is a reaction that promotes inflammation. Tregs play a balancing role and inhibit excessive inflammation.
In order to create Treg therapy, Quell borrowed from the process of the first wave of autologous therapy designed by the patient’s own T cells. Just like those personalized CAR-T cancer treatments, Quell’s therapy works by extracting cells from a patient’s blood sample, transforming these cells in the laboratory, reproducing them, and then infusing them back into the patient’s body.
The difference between CAR-T therapy and Quell’s Treg method is the cell type selected and the engineering steps in the laboratory. Quell uses antigens to design Tregs to guide these cells to the desired targets in the body. In addition to tissue targeting, Quell said that its technology can also give its Treg therapy the efficacy and safety of specific diseases, and produce better Tregs compared to earlier methods designed to design these cells.
Quell’s main Treg therapy candidate, QEL-001, is under development to prevent organ rejection in liver transplant patients. The company said that this cell therapy is designed to induce long-lasting immune tolerance, which may eliminate the need for patients to receive immunosuppressive therapy throughout their lives.
Other companies are trying to improve anti-rejection therapies that can be used for transplant patients. Novartis is developing a drug designed to block receptors that are part of the pathway that activates organ rejection.But in September, the pharmaceutical giant said it would Stop interim testing of the antibody drug iscalimab, After the mid-term results show that the therapy does not work like standard care anti-rejection drugs.
Talaris Therapeutics is using cell therapy, but not by using the patient’s own immune cellsInstead, the Louisville, Kentucky-based biotechnology company obtains immune cells and stem cells from organ donors and uses these cells to reprogram the organ recipient’s immune system. These cells train the immune system to tolerate transplanted organs by achieving chimera, in which two sets of DNA coexist in the same body. A phase 3 study of living donor kidney transplant patients is ongoing.In the third quarter financial results announced by Talaris earlier this month, the company Report All patients who reached the three-month mark after transplantation achieved chimerism.
Last month, Quill received Regulatory permission British authorities began clinical testing of its Treg therapy. Now that it has completed the new financing, the company said it expects that by the end of this year, the recruitment of patients in the phase 1/2 study of liver transplant patients will begin.
Organ transplantation is just the first potential application of Quell technology. The biotech company is also studying the use of its Treg to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The research puts the company in the increasingly competitive Treg space. In February, Merck acquired Pandion Therapeutic for US$1.85 billion, a clinical-stage biotechnology that can design fusion proteins to selectively expand Tregs As a way to treat inflammatory diseases in the body. The preclinical study of Abata Therapeutics is closer to Quell’s approach.Biotechnology company based in Boston Design the patient’s own Treg with T cell receptors to guide cell therapy to target tissues.
Based in Paris Egle Therapeutics is developing Treg cancer immunotherapy Used in its own pipeline and cooperated with Takeda Pharmaceutical. Other companies developing Treg cell therapies include GentiBio, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, and TRexBio.
Quill is Founded in 2019 Provided by Synona, a healthcare investment company.In February of this year, Quell announced that its Series A financing had Expanded to 84 million U.S. dollarsThe Series B financing announced on Monday was led by Jeito Capital, Ridgeback Capital Investments, SV Health Investors and Fidelity Management & Research Company. Founding investor Syncona also participated. Other new investors include British Patient Capital through its Future Fund: Breakthrough program, Janus Henderson Investors, Monashee Investment Management, Point72, and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management.
Public domain Treg images for Flickr users NIH Picture Library
