Incorporated in 2018, we are a biotech company spun off from Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s lead R&D agency in public sector and focus on translating our proprietary technologies into cell-based immunotherapies for cancers. The development of our novel technologies has been inspired by the clinical success of chimeric antigen receptor-modified T (CAR-T) cells in treating hematological malignancies as well as the clinical limitations and commercial challenges in extrapolating the CAR-T principle into treatment of solid tumors.
Development of CD19-targeting CAR-T cells in treating B-cell malignancies symbolizes that cellular immunotherapy is becoming one of the pillars in cancer care. However, due to the reliance on the limited cell quality and quantity of patients, the lack of “safe” surface cancer antigens and their recognition system and the cancer escape because of a single antigen-targeting strategy, it remains challenging to apply current CAR-T principle into treatments of other type of cancers, in particular solid tumours. To this end, we have established two novel patient blood cell-independent platform technologies to manufacture “off-the-shelf” cell-based cancer immunotherapies, namely CAR-γδ T cell technology (CTM-N2D therapy) and iPSC-derived γδ NKT cell technology (gdNKT therapy). Such therapies exploit the multiple antigen recognition systems of natural killer (NK) cells and γδ T cells and may be used to recognize and treat a broad range of cancers.
To develop our technologies into therapies, we have established a GMP facility in Johor, Malaysia (near Singapore) to manufacture cell therapy products to support clinical trials. The facility has been built to the international PIC/S GMP Standards and we have a well-trained team to conduct all essential GMP activities including manufacture, QC, QA and documentation. We are directly overseeing the manufacture of cell therapy products by ourselves in our own GMP facility instead of engaging and relying on a contract manufacturing organization. Now we have developed our lead CAR-γδ T cell technology into a clinical trial-ready product (CTM-N2D therapy) for a phase I trial.