City of Hope enters licensing agreement with Chimeric to develop its pioneering chlorotoxin CAR T cell therapy

On September 21, 2020, City of Hope, the world-renowned independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases, announced that is has licensed intellectual property relating to its pioneering chlorotoxin chimeric antigen receptor (CLTX-CAR) T cell therapy to Chimeric Therapeutics Limited, an Australian biotechnology company.

The therapy is currently being used in a phase 1 clinical trial at City of Hope to treat glioblastoma (GBM), a type of brain tumor. The first patient in the trial was recently dosed; Behnam Badie, M.D., chief of City of Hope’s Division of Neurosurgery and The Heritage Provider Network Professor in Gene Therapy, is leading this innovative, first-of-its-kind trial.

Chimeric has acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize certain patents relating to City of Hope’s CLTX-CAR T cells, as well as to further develop the therapy for other cancers.

“City of Hope is excited to enter into this agreement with Chimeric as it supports our innovative research in CAR T cell therapy and our commitment to extend these therapies to more patients, particularly those with GBM and other solid tumors that are difficult to treat,” said Christine Brown, Ph.D., The Heritage Provider Network Professor in Immunotherapy and deputy director of City of Hope’s T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratory. “Chimeric shares our goal of providing effective CAR T cell therapies to more patients with current unmet medical needs.”

BioscienceLA CEO Dave Whelan has previously commented on how the region is “starting to see this critical mass of academic innovation, corporate innovation, investment and spinoffs.” CAR T therapies are one of a few areas of research witnessing a “virtuous cycle of development,” Whelan has said.

Led by Brown and Michael Barish, Ph.D., chair of City of Hope’s Department of Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, and Dongrui Wang, Ph.D., a recent graduate of City of Hope’s Irell & Manella Graduate School of Biological Sciences, the team developed and tested the first CAR T cell therapy using CLTX, a component of scorpion venom, to direct T cells to target brain tumor cells. The research was published this past March in Science Translational Medicine.

You can read the full press release here.