ElevateBio Forms New Cell Therapy Company

Waltham-based ElevateBio has formed a new company – as yet un-named – co-founded by George Daley, M.D, Ph.D., and Boston Children’s Hospital to develop cell therapies based on a novel platform that generates functionally mature immune cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The new process overcomes the tendency of iPSCs to generate immature, embryonic blood cell types, and enables the generation of multiple subtypes of immune cells that display mature molecular signatures similar to T cells from adult blood. Peer-reviewed publication in the journal Cell Stem Cell showed that iPSC-derived mature αβ T cells exhibited antitumor activity and cytokine secretion and could serve as an ideal source for the development of “off-the-shelf” cell therapies.

“This exciting new company is the first from our collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital and is a prime example of how our…iPSC cell lines and process development capabilities, our gene editing technology, our CAR and TCR constructs, and our scale-up manufacturing capabilities…creates the perfect foundation needed to turn these scientific breakthroughs into transformational medicines,” said David Hallal, Chairman and CEO of ElevateBio.

“CAR-T therapies have revolutionized the treatment of certain blood cancers, with complete responses in many patients undergoing this type of treatment. However, current treatment strategies involve manufacturing a customized CAR-T cell product for each individual patient, which is cumbersome and labor-intensive,” said Daley, senior author of the newly published Cell Stem Cell paper and whose lab is at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Our science offers an approach to circumvent these hurdles by offering an entirely new way of making allogeneic immune cell therapies that could pave the way for powerful treatments for a wide range of cancers.” (Source: ElevateBio Website, 04 August,2022)