GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, February 25, 2014—NexImmune, an immunotherapy company developing products for the treatment of cancer, today announced a new scientific publication by NexImmune co-founder Dr. Jonathan Schneck and colleagues that provides an important advance in the use of its proprietary Artificial Immune (AIM?) Technology for cellular therapy of cancer. The study, published this week in ACS Nano, demonstrated the use of nanoparticle artificial Antigen Presenting Cells (aAPC), a key component of the AIM technology, with applied magnetic fields to activate and expand naive, normally poorly responsive T cell populations. Significantly, activated cells were highly effective for treating cancer in a mouse model system.
Activating naive T cells has been a key, but elusive goal of immunotherapy as these cells are more effective than differentiated T cell subtypes for treating cancer. Once activated, naive T cells have a higher proliferative capacity and a greater ability to generate strong, long-term T cell responses important for immunotherapy. Thus, this study describes a novel approach whereby AIM aAPC can potentially be coupled to magnetic-field-enhanced activation of T cells to increase the yield and activity of antigen-specific T cells expanded from naive precursors, thereby improving cellular therapy for cancer.
CEO Kenneth Carter commented: “The publication in ACS Nano represents an important advance in the therapeutic potential of the AIM aAPC technology in adoptive cellular therapy involving direct ex-vivo stimulation of patient immune cells. T cells activated by aAPC in a magnetic field inhibited growth of B16 melanoma in mice with significantly improved host survival, thereby demonstrating the clinical relevance of the AIM technology for adoptive immunotherapy.”
The AIM aAPC platform is the foundation for an innovative approach to immunotherapy in which the body’s own immune system is guided by a synthetic particle engineered to activate and orchestrate a targeted immune response. Central to the AIM technology are aAPC that bypass many of the bottlenecks related to both established and emerging immunotherapies. AIM aAPC have potential uses as both ex vivo adoptive immunotherapies and as injectable off-the-shelf medicines. NexImmune, Inc. holds an exclusive worldwide license to the AIM aAPC technology from Johns Hopkins University.
About NexImmune
NexImmune is an early stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel immuno-therapeutics based on the proprietary Artificial IMmune (AIM?) nanotechnology. This nanotechnology platform is the foundation for an innovative approach to immunotherapy in which the body’s own immune system is guided by a synthetic particle (artificial Antigen Presenting Cells, aAPC) that has been engineered to activate and orchestrate a targeted immune response. In pre-clinical studies, aAPC have been shown to have potential utility for treating cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases and can also be used for the development of diagnostic products. NexImmune is using the AIM technology to develop a pipeline of products to treat cancer. For more information visit: www.neximmune.com
Citation: Karlo Perica, et al., “Magnetic-field-induced T cell receptor clustering by nanoparticles enhances T cell activation and stimulates antitumor activity in vivo,” ACS Nano (2014).
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