Cellectis has now announced that the European Patent Office has granted it a patent to use CRISPR in T cells in order to enable the development of CAR-T therapies for cancer. The patent, to be issued in August and valid until 2034, will advance Cellectis’ efforts to marshal the immune system against cancer.
CRISPR gene editing is considered one of the biggest discoveries of the century, which has led to a fierce battle over its IP; and Cellectis has now managed to take control of the technology for applications in another hot area, CAR-T, which is showing astonishing potential in the fight against cancer.
The patent covers the use of RNA-guided endonucleases in primary T cells, which includes both the Cas9 and Cpf1 versions of CRISPR.
In order to improve its CAR-T cells, the biotech plans to use CRISPR to screen for genes that can be knocked out. These could include genes encoding checkpoint inhibitors—molecules that guard against excessive inflammation by weakening the activity of immune cells. Removing the shackles from CAR-T cells may unleash their full therapeutic potential—if this can be done without provoking a runaway immune response.
Cellectis has licensed its CAR-T candidate UCART19, now in Phase I against acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), to Servier and Pfizer. A second program, wholly owned by
the French biotech, UCART123, is the first and so far the only “off-the-shelf” CAR-T therapy to enter clinical trials in human.
