Cellectis Forms Partnerships With CRO Accelera And CELLforCURE For CART Cells

Cellectis announced in a press release that it has formed a partnership with contract research organization (CRO) Accelera for preclinical studies. Cellectis and Accelera will conduct preclinical studies of Cellectis’ UCART 19, an engineered allogeneic CD19 T-cell for B-cell leukemias and lymphomas.

A few days later, the company announced a manufacturing agreement with CELLforCURE, a large facility in Europe, which will manufacture clinical batches of Cellectis’ CART cells.

Dr. Mathieu Simon, MD, EVP at Cellectis stated, “Thanks to the extremely positive in vivo proof of concept results for our flagship UCART19 product, we are delighted to take a step forward with Accelera .” Dr. Simon also said, “We are very pleased with this partnership with CELLforCURE, a unique brand-new industrial platform dedicated to cell therapies and equipped with a state-of-the-art GMP manufacturing facility.”

Cellectis and Accelera Agreement

Accelera, part of the Nerviano Medical Sciences Group (NMS) a European CRO, will perform the preclinical studies for Cellectis’ Investigational New Drug (IND) package for UCART19 and support efforts for the Phase I human clinical trial to begin in 2015. Accelera is the pre-clinical group in the NMS organization, which focuses on breakthrough treatments for cancer. NMS has licenses or partnerships with Pfizer, Roche, Novartis, and academic entities.

Cellectis and CELLforCURE Agreement

CELLforCURE has agreed to manufacture Cellectis’ allogeneic CART cells. The industrial facility will produce clinical batches from the UCART product family. Cellectis stated that CELLforCURE, a subsidiary of the biopharmaceutical group LFB, is the largest commercial industrial facility for cell therapies in Europe. Dr. Simon of Cellectis said that cGMP manufacturing of CART cells is a “paradigm change” in cancer immunotherapy.

Cellectis’ CART Cells

Cellectis’ UCART (Universal Chimeric Antigen Receptor – T cells) product family consists of allogenic cell therapy products. They are based on CAR (Chimeric Antigen Receptor) technology and genome engineering. They target tumor antigens in leukemias, lymphomas, and tumors. CART cell advantages include their ability to be standardized and, therefore, manufactured reliably and cost effectively. Cost savings would make them available to more patients and the allogeneic products can be shipped in advance anywhere without local processing.