15P - Enhancement Platform for immune Cells (EPiC): invIOs’s innovative cell-therapy platform for creating personalized cancer treatments

Background

Immunotherapies have revolutionized the way cancer patients are treated today. While immune checkpoint-blocking antibodies are an established first-line treatment option for patients with various solid tumors, personalized immune cell therapies are still at an early stage of development. Cell-processing platforms have proven indispensable for producing personalized therapies and allowing rapid adjustments to the resulting drug products in response to tumor evolution or escape from immune surveillance.

Methods

invIOs has developed EPiC, a proprietary cell-processing platform for creating personalized immune cell therapies to treat solid and hematological cancers. Our technology allows rapid modification of immune cells via the electroporation of small interfering RNAs in a closed manufacturing process. As such the platform currently enables intracellular silencing of immune checkpoints, including some considered undruggable in different types of immune cells, such as the E3 ubiquitin protein ligase Casitas B-lineage lymphoma-b (Cbl-b).

Results

invIOs currently has two cell-therapy candidates silenced for Cbl-b in clinical and pre-clinical development leveraging the EPiC platform. APN401 is an autologous cell therapy comprising peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), while INV441 utilizes tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). Both cell-therapy candidates showed increased and durable immune responses after transient Cbl-b silencing.

Conclusions

EPiC is a versatile cell-processing platform for developing personalized immune cell therapies for hard-to-treat solid cancers. It enables significantly shorter manufacturing times than currently available approaches. The platform has already generated two candidates using different source materials silenced for Cbl-b using siRNA. The advantage of using an RNAi-based technology is that it allows transient and highly specific modification of immune cells. Beyond silencing, EPiC enables over-expression of proteins and combinations of modalities (e.g. mRNA) to modify multiple immune pathways and create the next generation of personalized immune cell therapies.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

invIOs GmbH.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

M. Kuttke, R. Gugenberger, K. Thell, S. Bischof, B. Peball, H. Muehleisen, M. Urban, B. Gapp, A. Bugajska-Schretter, A. Halfmann, P. Morley, A. Dohnal: Financial Interests, Personal, Full or part-time Employment: invIOs GmbH.