Ziopharm Develops Cancer Drugs With On-Off Switch
Biopharmaceutical firm Ziopharm Oncology announced that it has expanded its synthetic immuno-oncology programs with Intrexon Corp to develop cancer drugs that can be ‘switched’ on or off with an oral pill.
The company divulged that it will start working on chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy with Intrexon and will advance its development efforts with the RheoSwitch Therapeutic System (RTS) platform. RTS is Intrexon’s inducible regulator for the expression of therapeutic molecules using an oral activator ligand. Intrexon will provide automation of the synthetic gene-making process. Ziopharm will work with RheoSwitch for its clinical program for Ad-RTS-IL-12, a unique DNA-based therapeutic candidate for regulated expression of interleukin-12 (IL-12). IL-12 is a critical protein for triggering anti-cancer T-cell immune response.
The company recently presented pre-clinical and clinical results of Ad-RTS-IL-12, which was found to be linked with the reduction of cancer stem cells in the brain at the 17th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT), held last May in Washington.
Ziopharm said that while it has proven RTS’ on-off switch with Ad-RTS-IL-12, it will investigate CAR-T drugs to target solid tumors and blood cancers. Other firms use technology that permanently turns off CAR-T drugs using what is known as a ‘suicide gene’. Using the RTS can help facilitate precise regulation of systemic effects of cell therapies for enhanced safety and efficacy.
Samuel Broder, EVP of Scientific and Public Affairs at Intrexon, said, “Intrexon is applying industrial engineering principles to synthetic immunology to potentiate important biotechnology platforms enabling end-to-end solutions for complex biologic challenges. In particular, the utilization of our proprietary RheoSwitch platform may be especially advantageous in CAR-T treatments.”
Dr. Jonathan Lewis, CEO of Ziopharm, said, “We are excited by the prospects of applying our advanced synthetic immuno-oncology toolkit towards targeted immunotherapies like CAR-T. We also look forward to expanding RTS applications in novel therapeutic strategies for cancer where the ability to control gene expression is essential.”
The companies said they will release a progress update on the program in the second half of 2014.