New program to obtain cord blood NK cell therapy for hard-to-treat cancer initiated
2024-06-18David Langlais (Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Institute of Genomic Medicine) and Michel Tremblay (Rosalind & Morris Goodman Cancer Institute) are leading a new $5.8 M project funded under the Genome Canada Genome Canada GAPP program to obtain cord blood NK cell therapy for hard-to-treat cancer.
The project will use genomics solutions to improve the clinical management of hard-to-treat cancers like AML through CB-NK cell therapy. It will establish a comprehensive resource for “off-the-shelf” NK cell immunotherapy.
Novel methodologies will enable the processing, storage and recovery of CB-NK cells; optimisation and simplification of their clinical use; and national distribution of the therapeutic CB-NK cell bank to treat a larger cohort of cancer patients.
The team will develop the protocol/documentation for Health Canada approval of phase I trials to bring these therapies to the clinic, followed by a multi-institutional clinical trial with the Canadian Cancer Trial Group.
The program will identify biomarkers cord blood NK cell anti-tumor quality to develop an off-the-shelf NK cell therapy for AML (and other cancers)
- Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) and other cancers still have poor prognosis and are not eligible or do not respond well to immuno or CAR-T cell therapies.
- Natural Killer (NK) cells have an MHC-independent tumor cell killing ability
- Sourcing NK cells from cord blood has many advantages: greater cytolytic activity; greater proliferative potential; no risk to donor; simpler donor-patient matching
- CB-NK cells’ activity and survival can be increased and sustained by proprietary small molecule inhibitors.
