Empowered Patient Podcast Cord Blood-Derived T Regulatory Cell Therapies with Dr. Simrit Parmar Cellenkos
Dr. Simrit Parmar, Founder of Cellenkos, is developing T regulatory cell therapies from cord blood to treat aplastic anemia, myelofibrosis, and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Their three-prong strategy focuses on resolving inflammation and alleviating the burden of transfusions. Treg cells from cord blood are naturally tolerant and do not risk rejection, meaning they can be administered to patients without the need for matching. The cells can be consistently manufactured in a scalable way and distributed globally.
Simrit explains, "Tregs, the T regulatory cells, are actually regulators of our immune system. So if you think about it every day as a human being, we face many challenges. We face many insults and injuries to our body, both externally and internally, but our body has a way to maintain that balance. The T regulatory cells are the cells that are the mastermind of making sure that any response by our body, for example, to get rid of an antigen or to get rid of an irritant does not overstay the welcome because our body utilizes the mechanism of inflammation to get rid of these injuries or these insults."
"So umbilical cord blood is, or the umbilical cord is, the connection between the baby, the fetus, and the mother. And if you think about it, the baby is 50% mismatched to the mother, and nature allows it. Nature allows a permissive environment where the baby can grow and eventually give birth, and the whole species is advanced. What happens is that nature has allowed the tolerance, and one of the mechanisms by which this tolerance, the maternal-fetal tolerance, is induced by the very T regulatory cells that populate the conduit between the mother and the baby, is the cord blood. So what we did is harness the power that nature has bestowed upon these cells to just do one job and one job only, which is to resolve inflammation. This is the fundamental reason we went after cord blood as a starting material because as a physician and drug developer, we wanted to make sure that the product, the cells we're giving into the patient, are doing its job."
#Biotechnology #DrugDevelopment #LifeSciences #AplasticAnemia #Myelofibrosis #GVHD #ALS #Tregs #CellTherapies
#TargetedTherapies #AutoimmuneDiseases