Nordic Life Science 1
“The fundamental shift has arrived. TCR-T opens u
p a new and basically untapped target space in oncology. This is the bottom line. It's more than just a new targeting system – it's a whole new target space.” S OMETHING IS COOKING at biotech company Anocca’s headquarters in Södertälje, just outside Stockholm, Sweden. Extending over several floors in two buildings in an industrial complex, the company has been working to decode the immunity of T lymphocytes, or T-cells for short – a type of white blood cells. They’re setting the foundation for creating new forms of T-cell immunotherapies to address untreatable cancers and other difficult-to-treat diseases. As precision medicine involving T-cells advances, T-cell receptor engineered T-cell therapies (TCR-T) are taking the stage as a promising next generation of engineered Tcell therapy. A paradigm shift in T-cell therapy? Anocca’s discovery engine uses programmable human cells to recreate and manipulate T-cell immunity. This scales up TCR-T cell therapy development, thereby systematically generating personalized treatments for broad patient populations. “CAR-T therapies has opened the door for cell therapies, there are limitations in the target space for CAR-T. But it’s so amazing that it has worked. The next step in T-cell therapies is in opening the target space,” Anocca’s COO Viktor Arnkil says. “The fundamental shift has arrived,” CEO Reagan Jarvis says, and explains: “TCR-T opens up a new and basically untapped target space in oncology. This is the bottom line. It's more than just a new targeting system – it's a whole new target space.” 74 | NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG Anocca is concentrating on building an oncology pipeline of TCR-T cell therapies. Their library currently consists of more than 40 assets in pre-clinical stages – one of which is set to start first-in-human trials this year, pending Clinical Trial Application (CTA) approval. So, how do you manufacture T-cell therapies at scale? Once you've got a good target and a good receptor, how do you actually make a living cell as a product? T here have been some major developments in this area in recent years,” Reagan Jarvis says, and continues, “One is a move away from viral vectors to non-viral vectors. We've seen a move into gene editing platforms that don't require viral vectors for delivery, and there are a few consequences of this. One, which is actually quite particular to the TCR-T space, is that it allows you to scale out across those targets, very, very efficiently in terms of time and cost. In other words, you don't need to make a new viral vector every time you make a new receptor construct. All you need is a novel DNA construct that encodes the TCR and other elements, and instead of spending ore than a million euros and 18 months to build a viral vector, you’ll spend a few hundred euros and a few weeks of time.” All under one roof Being fully integrated, Anocca operates an advanced R&D infrastructure, including their custom software ecosystem and in-house cGMP manufacturing and process development facilities. Keeping the entire drug discovery and HOT TOPIC // MANUFACTURING