Empowered Patient Podcast Producing Natural Killer Immune Cells from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells to Treat Cancer with Daniel Teper Cytovia Therapeutics
Daniel Teper is the CEO and Founder of Cytovia Therapeutics and talks about using natural killer, NK, cells as an alternative to T-cells in immuno-oncology. He shares insights about the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, IPSC-derived NK cells, iNK cells, used by themselves or using their Flex-NK cell Engagers or in combination to address the challenges cancer patients face.
Daniel elaborates, "That's also where the NK cells may have advantages over T-cells, in that it hasn't been reported that they cause CRS, GBHD, or other side effects that would require the patients to be kept in the hospital. Now, if we say the first iteration was derived from the patient's own blood, the second iteration is donor, the third generation, which we are one of a handful of companies to pursue and master, is the production of immune cells, including NK cells, from induced pluripotent stem cells."
"We see also that you can direct the cells in two ways. You can direct the cells by inserting what's called a CAR, or chimeric antigen receptor, that's like a GPS on the cell. But alternatively, we can redirect the NK cells to kill the tumor cells by combining them with antibodies, and particularly with what we call NK engager antibodies. So our brand of NK engager antibodies is called Flex-NK cell engager antibodies. And what they do is that they have one arm that binds and activates the NK cell, and another arm that binds into the tumor cell, and the NK cells are redirected to kill the tumor cells."
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