CRISPR Therapeutics and Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center (MGHCC) have entered into a two-year research collaboration and license option agreement to develop novel T-cell therapies for cancer.  CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing will be utilised to improve upon current T-cell therapies in development for treatment of both blood cancers and solid tumours.  According to the press release issued by CRISPR Therapeutics, the collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass Gen) is aimed at expanding CRISPR Therapeutics’ efforts in the field of ex vivo use of CRISPR editing into a more diverse set of tumour types and molecular targets.

The collaboration is the most recent development in CRISPR Therapeutics’ on-going expansion of its work in immuno-oncology.  In February of this year, the company announced the hiring of Jon Terrett  to lead its unit dedicated to advancing therapies using CRISPR/Cas9 into the clinic.  Recently, the company announced a service agreement with MaSTherCell SA to develop and manufacture allogeneic CAR-T therapies including CTX101, the company’s lead immuno-oncology program targeting CD19 positive malignancies. Also, in July of this year, CRISPR Therapeutics entered a research collaboration with Neon Therapeutics to explore using a combination of each company's proprietary technologies to develop novel T-cell therapies.  

In this new collaboration with Mass Gen, Marcela V. Maus, Director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program at MGHCC and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical, will lead the scientific work at Mass Gen. “By combining our gene editing capabilities with Dr. Maus’ pioneering expertise in T-cell therapy, we hope to accelerate our progress toward making these therapies a reality for patients suffering from cancer,” said Jon Terrett, head of Immuno-Oncology Research and Translation, CRISPR Therapeutics. 

This latest investment in CRISPR Therapeutics’ development program for next-generation T-cell cancer immunotherapies comes as Novartis announced on Wednesday 30th August that the FDA has approved Kymriah^TM (tisagenlecleucel) suspension for intravenous infusion (formerly CTL019) the first chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapy, for the treatment of patients up to 25 years of age with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that is refractory or in second or later relapse.  Kymriah^TM is the first CAR-T based therapy approved by the FDA. 

It should be noted that competing CRISPR spin-out companies Intellia Therapeutics and Editas Medicine have established collaborations of their own exploring the use of CRISPR to produce CAR-T therapies, partnering with Novartis and Juno Therapeutics, respectively, in big money deals. Given the technical challenges (particularly delivery) facing in vivo therapeutic applications of CRISPR technology, ex vivo applications like CAR-T cell production are widely regarded as being closer to becoming a clinical and commercial reality. Indeed, most of the CRISPR based clinical trials currently running or approved are for the production of CRISPR edited T-cells to treat cancer (e.g. PD-1 knockouts).