Prescient Therapeutics Limited announced that it has signed an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific designed to accelerate development and commercialization of a highly scalable version of Prescient's OmniCAR cell therapy platform. The agreement's development plan will evaluate the potential of utilizing automated, closed cell therapy solutions to develop a novel process of manufacturing cell therapies on the OmniCAR platform using non-viral methods. The work program aims to develop the next generation OmniCAR cells that can be produced with greater efficiency, lower costs and unmatched reproducibility.

All CAR-T therapies approved by the FDA so far, and most CAR-T therapies in development, employ viral vectors to insert genetic material into immune cells to create chimeric antigen receptors (CARs)- expressing immune cells. Viral vectors are expensive, relatively inefficient and very time consuming to develop, often representing a key bottleneck and major cost contributor to CAR-T manufacturing. Furthermore, viral transduction processes are highly complex manual processes which are challenging for tech transfer, labour intensive and prone to operator variations, therefore producing highly variable and unpredictable results.

The work plan under this agreement will focus on creating OmniCAR cells with Thermo Fisher's portfolio of proprietary equipment and specialised cell and gene therapy manufacturing expertise. A key Prescient objective is to create a 2nd generation of the OmniCAR platform by being able to manufacture OmniCAR cells with greater efficiency and lower costs that are suitable for tech transfer to GMP-licensed contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO)s globally. This is aligned with Prescient's vision of decentralised manufacturing, which is best suited for multi-centre treatments, both during development and eventually for commercial roll-out.

The research is expected to take approximately 12 months to complete. Prescient will receive full ownership of outcomes from the collaboration and will not be required to make any cash contribution to this substantial project. Prescient believes that the agreement provides an opportunity for future development of other gene edits for incorporation into further-enhanced OmniCAR cell therapies that will address exhaustion and immune suppression.

Key points: Research program aims to advance development of next generation cellular therapies New platform to enable non-viral methods of transduction and automated, closed manufacturing solutions Prescient to leverage Thermo Fisher's expertise in cell and gene therapy to create a scalable cell therapy platform.