Autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been one of the most recent successes in cancer treatment, but limitations, such as manufacturing, costs or antigen escape in therapies directed against only one target that leads to resistance, highlight the need for new approaches. Classical natural killer T (NKT) cells engineered to express CARs constitute a novel type of allogeneic therapy that does not require T-cell receptor (TCR) gene editing, thus avoiding graft-vs.-host disease (GVHD).
Appia Bio Inc. raised $52 million in a series A funding round to bring forward a novel take on allogeneic cell therapy for cancer, based on a rare lymphocyte population, invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which exhibit aspects of both NK cell and T-cell biology.
