The Cancer Letter

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Drugs & Targets

MaxCyte, Washington University in St. Louis announce collaboration

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MaxCyte Inc. and Washington University in St. Louis announced a collaboration to develop unique immunotherapy drug candidates based on MaxCyte’s proprietary cell engineering platform technology, CARMA.

CARMA allows simple and rapid manufacture of advanced cancer treatments that utilize a patient’s own immune system and is differentiated from traditional CAR therapy due to its use of mRNA to engineer immune cells delivered back into a patient. By utilizing transient expression via mRNA delivery, CARMA allows control over severe adverse effects, opening the high potency of CAR immunotherapies to a broader range of cancers than traditional CAR approaches.

John DiPersio, chief of the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine and deputy director of the Siteman Cancer Center, and members of his team will collaborate with MaxCyte to conduct preclinical research with a focus on developing a potential investigational CAR therapy targeting acute myeloid leukemia and other related blood cancers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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