Science
The Problem
The most popular form of adoptive therapy using CAR-T cells achieves complete responses in many patients with B cell malignancies but fails to deliver long-term responses and has been largely unsuccessful for the treatment of solid tumors. Currently, only 3% of all cancer patients are eligible for T cell therapy.
Mongoose Bio advances a therapeutic approach that will fulfill the promise of T cell therapy for patients with solid tumors by addressing two major challenges limiting the efficacy and broader applicability of conventional T cell therapy:
- Novel targets for TCR-based cell therapy
- T cell persistence
The Solution
Mongoose Bio addresses both major challenges by advancing an approach based on TCRs directed against important immunogenic pan-cancer antigens and a memory programming module that will confer in vivo longevity to transferred T cells.
- Targets for T cell therapy: TCR-T therapies utilize the T cell receptor (TCR) to engage tumor targets. Because TCRs recognize surface MHC presented fragments of protein (peptides) that can originate from any cellular compartment, TCR targets can be a transcription factor, oncogene, cancer-testis antigen, DNA repair gene, chemoresistance gene or any of the thousands of tumor-associated proteins found in solid tumors. Mongoose Bio has interrogated its database of peptide target spectra and we have selected the highest-ranking antigens for our drug development portfolio.
- T cell memory: The second major challenge to effective T cell therapy has always been the limited persistence in vivo of the adoptively transferred T cells, leading to relapse rates as high as 60% despite patients achieving complete remission following CAR-T cell therapy. In large part, this is attributable to the absence of “T cell memory” in the transferred cells – a feature absent from almost every cell therapy modality to date.