Leucid Bio announced that it has entered a strategic collaboration with Lonza to utilize Lonza's Cocoon? Platform for the Company's forthcoming Phase I clinical trial, through to commercial manufacturing. Under the terms of the collaboration, Leucid will utilise Lonza as its preferred manufacturer, aiming to deliver high quality cell therapies quickly and cost-effectively to patients in a decentralized manufacturing model. Leucid is, in turn, one of Lonza's preferred collaborators on the Cocoon? Platform, and both companies will work together to optimise and streamline the manufacturing process for Leucid's CAR-T therapies. As a preferred collaborator, Leucid will have early access to new Cocoon? Platform technologies. Founded to translate 20 years of pioneering CAR-T research led by Dr. John Maher at King's College London, Leucid has developed a proprietary engine that builds upon Dr. Maher's novel parallel CAR-T model which positions these molecules in a more natural biological configuration. The Company's technology confers properties on the CART-cells that enable them to consistently outperform previous generations of CAR-T therapies in pre-clinical studies. As a result, this leads to enhanced T-cell potency and persistent long-term response with reduced toxicity. CAR T-cell therapy is a revolutionary technology in which the patient's own immune cells are reprogrammed so they can recognise and destroy cancer cells. This has proven to be a powerful therapy for refractory blood cancers, but has not yet been very effective for the treatment of solid tumours. Leucid's LEU-011 programme is a NKG2D-targeted CAR T-cell therapy in pre-clinical development for the treatment of solid tumours and haematological malignancies. The NKG2D receptor is an activating immune receptor that triggers cell death upon recognition of human NKG2D ligands expressed on transformed, infected or damaged cells. LEU-011 has potential for the treatment of multiple cancer types as NKG2D ligands are expressed on more than 80% of human tumour cells.