Download MaxCyte and The Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Announce

MaxCyte and The Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Announce Strategic
Immuno-Oncology Collaboration to Advance CAR T-cell Therapies
Gaithersburg, MD, 21 April 2015 – MaxCyte® Inc., the pioneer in cell therapies using scalable, highperformance cell transfection systems, today announces a strategic research collaboration with The Johns
Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center to develop unique Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, which
harness patients’ own immune systems to combat cancers.
MaxCyte’s unique approach to CAR cell therapy allows targeting of solid tumor cancers by enabling control
over the on-target, off-tumor toxicity, which limits other CAR therapies to hematological cancers. MaxCyte
achieves this by introducing the CAR construct as a transiently expressing messenger RNA (mRNA), thus
allowing control of the duration of expression and toxicity against target antigens in normal tissue. This
unique approach also avoids the cell expansion step required for standard approaches, dramatically
reducing manufacturing time and expense for CAR therapies from days or weeks to a matter of hours.
The preclinical work performed in collaboration with Leisha Emens, M.D., Ph.D. an associate professor in
oncology, in the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, who will support a future planned Investigational
New Drug (IND) filing for a CAR therapy targeting a broad range of solid tumors. No financial terms are
disclosed.
“We are truly excited to be working with Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, one of the leading cancer
centers in the world, in the development of this next-generation CAR therapy,” said Doug Doerfler,
President & CEO of MaxCyte, Inc. “The combination of Johns Hopkins’ expertise and MaxCyte’s unique
product development capabilities will enable the rapidly advancing area of CAR therapies to move into the
clinic in solid tumors in a platform that provides rapid, cost-effective manufacture of Cellular
Therapeutics.”
Ends
MaxCyte
Meg Duskin, Marketing Communications Manager
Consilium Strategic Communications
Chris Welsh / Mary-Jane Elliot / Ivar Milligan / Lindsey Neville
+1 301 944 1645
[email protected]
+44 (0)20 3709 5700
[email protected]
About MaxCyte
MaxCyte is a world leader in the discovery, development, manufacture, and delivery of innovative cell
therapies utilizing best in class cell modification technologies.
MaxCyte has developed a next-generation technology–flow electroporation–for the rapid engineering of
human cells as therapeutics, enabling the development of safer, more effective and lower cost cell-based
therapies for a broad range of applications with blockbuster commercial potential. The company currently
has clinical, pre-clinical-partnered, and proprietary products under development and is presently involved
in more than a dozen trials.
The MaxCyte GT® Flow Transfection System is a universal platform for the rapid, automated loading of
CAR-modified mRNA into peripheral blood cells, which avoids the time and cost-intensive cell expansion
process. The loading of fresh patient cells with CAR mRNA harnesses immune cells for targeted killing of
tumors. This anti-tumor activity is not dependent on the patient’s immune system and is independent of
cell surface concentration of the tumor antigen.
The Company also markets a portfolio of products and services that include the MaxCyte STX® Scalable
Transfection System and MaxCyte VLX® Large Scale Transfection System. These platforms are used in drug
discovery research and screening and protein production environments by 9 of the top 10 pharma
companies worldwide as well as the top three in Japan. MaxCyte products enable the rapid development
and consistent production of billions of (co)transfected primary cells, stem cells, and cell lines for protein
and antibody production, rapid response vaccine development, and for cell-based assays with comparable
results and Seamless Scalability™ from the bench to HTS and pilot and production scale.
For more information, www.maxcyte.com.