Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals PLC SAFE-HEMO-CAR-T Effective against AML in vitro (1571B)
October 06 2020 - 1:00AM
UK Regulatory
TIDMHEMO
RNS Number : 1571B
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals PLC
06 October 2020
6 October 2020
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc
("Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals" or the "Company")
CAR-T Cells with a Safety Switch are Effective against AML in
vitro
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc (LSE: HEMO), the biopharmaceutical
group developing new therapies and treatments for blood diseases,
is pleased to announce the following update on its activities.
As previously announced, Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals' CDX
bi-specific antibody has the potential to treat Acute Myeloid
Leukemia ("AML") directly as well as to provide a benign
conditioning regimen for blood stem cell replacement therapy. The
Company has now carried out extensive work developing treatments
for AML and has to date obtained encouraging results.
As announced on 20 February 2020, the Company has constructed
and successfully tested in vivo Chimeric Antigen Receptor ("CAR")
programmed T cells ("HEMO-CAR-T") for the potential treatment of
AML. HEMO-CAR was constructed using the Company's proprietary
humanized monoclonal antibody against a target on the surface of
AML cells.
It was also announced that the Company was engaging in
additional engineering of HEMO-CAR-T cells to increase their safety
and versatility. The Company has now introduced and successfully in
vitro tested a safety switch within the HEMO-CAR. The aim of this
safety switch is to modulate the activity of HEMO-CAR-T cells and
to turn them into a "controllable drug" - SAFE-HEMO-CAR-T. The
purpose of these efforts is to dramatically improve the safety and
potential versatility of HEMO-CAR-T cells for the treatment of AML
and/or conditioning of bone marrow transplants, as well as a number
of additional potential indications.
Following the successful completion of these in vitro tests, in
vivo tests of the efficacy of SAFE-HEMO-CAR-T against AML are being
conducted using a model of AML established on the background of
Advanced peripheral blood Hematopoietic Chimera (ApbHC) - humanized
mice developed by Immugenyx, LLC, a subsidiary of Hemogenyx
Pharmaceuticals. If these in vivo tests are successful, the Company
will discuss its findings with its partners under the Sponsored
Research Agreement with the University of Pennsylvania, announced
on 11 August 2020, with a view to considering the inclusion of
SAFE-HEMO-CAR-T in the program of pre-clinical trials currently
underway there.
Dr Vladislav Sandler, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We
are encouraged by this new data which demonstrates our continuing
progress in the development of novel treatments for blood cancers
such as AML. The development of SAFE-HEMO-CAR-T further expands the
Company's pipeline and advances it into a cutting-edge area of
cell-based immune therapy. We are excited to have developed another
unique product candidate that should, if successful, provide a new
and potentially effective treatment for blood cancers for which
survival rates are currently very poor."
About AML and CAR-T
AML, the most common type of acute leukemia in adults, has poor
survival rates (a five-year survival rate of less than 25% in
adults) and is currently treated using chemotherapy, rather than
the potentially more benign and effective form of therapy being
developed by Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals. The successful development
of the new therapy for AML would have a major impact on treatment
and survival rates for the disease.
CAR-T therapy is a treatment in which a patient's own T cells, a
type of immune cell, are modified to recognize and kill the
patient's cancer cells. The procedure involves: isolating T cells
from the patient, modifying the isolated T cells in a laboratory
using a CAR gene construct (which allows the cells to recognize the
patient's cancer); amplifying (growing to large numbers) the newly
modified cells; and re-introducing the cells back into the
patient.
Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure
Certain information contained in this announcement would have
been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of
Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 until the release of this
announcement.
Enquiries:
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc https://hemogenyx.com
Dr Vladislav Sandler, Chief Executive
Officer & Co-Founder headquarters@hemogenyx.com
Peter Redmond, Director peter.redmond@hemogenyx.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 3470
SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP 0470
Matthew Johnson, Vadim Alexandre,
Soltan Tagiev
Tel: +44 (0)20 7469
Peterhouse Capital Limited 0930
Lucy Williams, Duncan Vasey, Charles
Goodfellow
About Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals plc
Hemogenyx Pharmaceuticals is a publicly traded company (LSE:
HEMO) headquartered in London, with its US operating subsidiaries,
Hemogenyx LLC and Immugenyx LLC, located in New York City at its
state-of-the-art research facility.
The Company is a pre-clinical stage biopharmaceutical group
developing new medicines and treatments to treat blood and
autoimmune disease and to bring the curative power of bone marrow
transplantation to a greater number of patients suffering from
otherwise incurable life-threatening diseases. Hemogenyx
Pharmaceuticals is developing several distinct and complementary
product candidates, as well as a platform technology that it uses
as an engine for novel product development.
For more than 50 years, bone marrow transplantation has been
used to save the lives of patients suffering from blood diseases.
The risks of toxicity and death that are associated with bone
marrow transplantation, however, have meant that the procedure is
restricted to use only as a last resort. The Company's technology
has the potential to enable many more patients suffering from
devastating blood diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma, as well
as severe autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, aplastic
anemia and systemic lupus erythematosus (Lupus), to benefit from
bone marrow transplantation.
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