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Stage of development
Technology validated in the laboratory

Intellectual property
Priority patent filed

Intended collaboration
Licensing and/or co-development

Contact
Alfonso del Rey
Vice-presidency for Innovation and Transfer
adelrey@icmab.es
comercializacion@csic.es

Reference
CSIC/AF/024
Additional information
#Health #Medical device #Therapy #Materials #Micro & Nanomaterial #Health #Oncology

Hydrogel for its use in CAR-T Therapy

Novel Hydrogel with optimized mechanical and structural properties to resemble artificial lymph nodes and improve primary human CAR-T cell manufacture.

Market need
Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is a novel immunotherapy against cancer. Chimeric antigen receptor CAR-T therapy is a promising ACT. T cells are harvested from the patients and are genetically modified to express an artificial receptor, the CAR, that selectively targets cancer cells. T cells are expanded ex vivo and re-infused in the patient to destroy cancer cells.
Gold standard ex vivo expansion methods cannot mimic the proliferation and activation of T cells that occurs in vivo in the lymph nodes. A major challenge in CAR-T therapy is to manufacture large amounts of persistent therapeutic T cells.
Los métodos de cultivo de referencia no pueden imitar la proliferación y activación de las células T que ocurre in vivo en los nódulos linfáticos. Un gran reto de la terapia CAR-T es la producción de grandes cantidades de células T terapéuticas.

Proposed solution
This novel hydrogel has mechanical and structural properties that mimic the lymph nodes, which enhanced CAR expression and T cell proliferation. That is crucial, because CAR T ACT needs a sufficient expansion of cells, but also to ensure that as many cells as possible are expressing the CAR receptor.


Competitive advantages
  • Production of CAR T products with a higher number of cells expressing CAR receptors.
  • Reduction of the time needed to obtain sufficient cells for the treatment.
  • Easy-to-produce and easy-to-handle material.