Meeting Report: Focus on cell therapy
The annual Bio-Europe Spring meeting typically brings together business development directors from small and medium-sized European companies to discuss licensing or partnering deals with their counterparts at large pharma, or with venture capitalists. In the past, the companies by and large have been developers of small molecule or antibody drugs. This year the meeting, which took place on 9 to 11 March, featured several companies with regenerative medicine technologies, including one that is just a year old.
The annual Bio-Europe Spring meeting typically brings together business development directors from small and medium-sized European companies to discuss licensing or partnering deals with their counterparts at large pharma, or with venture capitalists. In the past, the companies by and large have been developers of small molecule or antibody drugs. This year the meeting, which took place on 9 to 11 March, featured several companies with regenerative medicine technologies, including one that is just a year old.
The young cohort is Histide AG of Switzerland which was founded in 2014 to exploit technology that reportedly directs cell fate. Thus far, the company has 13 patents and just 10 employees. In November of last year it completed a Series A financing round, raising CHF 4.5 million (€4.26 million) to expand its pipeline. The round was led by Parter Capital Group AG of Switzerland and a number of private investors.
Florian Kemmerich, the chief executive, told delegates that Histide’s main asset is a series of “rationally-designed” small molecules that replicate the complex microenvironment in human tissues. They operate in extracellular space, sending signals into cells to direct their fate. The company claims the technology can dictate the commitment of a range of cell types from stem cells to specialised adult cells. “We believe that this is a new approach; a more physiological approach to help the body heal,” Mr Kemmerich said.
Unlike gene therapy and RNA-based therapies, the Histide technology doesn’t require the introduction of foreign molecules inside the cell. In a cancer setting, the technology can potentially “take the cell out of the cell cycle and into a new state,” he commented. In cancer, tumours can arise when cells progress through the cell cycle unchecked. Histide has entered into research partnerships with universities in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK to further explore applications of the technology.
In a separate presentation, the chief executive of Theravectys SA of France gave an update on the company’s portfolio of vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases. Renaud Vaillant said Theravectys is poised to start a human trial of a vaccine for adult T-cell leukaemias and lymphomas that are caused by the human T-lymphotropic virus. The candidate vaccine is based on lentiviral vector technology where the target antigen is inserted into the backbone of the vector. The technology has been tested in patients with HIV-1 and has been shown to be safe, the executive said.
Theravectys is a 2005 spin-out from the Pasteur Institute and has completed four financing rounds raising a total of €27.2 million. It has a large pre-clinical oncology portfolio that includes a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell programme. Mr Vaillant said the company would like to improve the safety of the CAR technologies, which can produce cytokine cascades in patients. This would be done by producing a ‘switch’ inside the cells which could turn the cells on and off during treatment.
By Victoria English and William Ellington, 15 March 2015
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