Mucommune wins federal funding to develop novel CAR-T cancer therapy
Mucommune, a Morrisville-based biotechnology company with roots at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been awarded up to $29.4 million in federal funding over six years to research and develop a novel cancer therapy.
The company’s research agreement with the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is to develop an immunotherapy based on in vivo (inside the body) engineering of CAR-T cells for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide.
The project is funded under ARPA-H’s Engineering of Immune Cells Inside the Body (EMBODY) program, led by ARPA-H Program Manager Daria Fedyukina, Ph.D.
CAR-T cell therapy involves genetically modifying a patient’s own T-cells, a type of white blood cell that helps the immune system fight infections and cancer. These modified cells, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells, are designed to find and bind to specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells, then kill the cancer cells.
Conventional ex vivo (outside the body) CAR-T cell therapy, in which cells are extracted from the body, modified and then reintroduced, has shown remarkable success in treating certain blood cancers and holds significant promise for extending its impact to solid tumors.
However, these CAR-T therapies are currently limited by the lengthy and costly ex vivo manufacturing process necessary to prepare the engineered T cells, the requirement for lymphodepletion (the lowering of a patient’s natural immune cells by chemotherapy), and modest efficacy to date against solid tumors.
Mucommune’s lentiviral transduction platform, in-licensed from UNC, enables highly efficient and specific genetic engineering of T cells inside the body.
The company said it would leverage support from the ARPA-H award to develop an in vivo engineered CAR-T product capable of specifically recognizing and eliminating lung cancer cells, at costs orders of magnitude lower than current CAR-T therapies.
Academic institutions participating in the project include UNC, as well as MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The project is designed to culminate with the completion of a proof-of-concept clinical trial. If successful, it could significantly expand the clinical adoption of CAR-T therapy by lowering costs, increasing patient access, improving safety and enhancing efficacy against solid tumors, and potentially establishing in vivo CAR-T therapy as a front-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer and other cancers, according to Mucommune.
“We are grateful for the ARPA-H award and to join the pioneering EMBODY program,” said Ming Yang, Ph.D., co-principal investigator of the award, who recently joined Mucommune as its chief R&D officer, spearheading the in vivo CAR-T initiative. “We believe this is a clear recognition of the unique advantages afforded by our unique
platform and approach.”
The principal investigator on the ARPA-H-funded project is Thomas Moench, M.D., who has over three decades of experience advancing multiple products into clinical development.
“Our vision is to transform CAR-T therapy into an accessible, frontline cancer treatment, offering patients a safer and more effective alternative to conventional therapies,” Moench said. “We believe that in situ-engineered CAR-T cell therapy holds the potential to overcome the barriers of solid tumors and dramatically improve outcomes for people living with various solid tumors that remain exceedingly difficult to treat with currently available therapies.”
Sam Lai, Ph.D., professor of pharmacoengineering and molecular pharmaceutics at UNC, and founder of Mucommune, said the CAR-T project is “a watershed moment in Mucommune’s evolution into an integrated R&D company.”
Mucommune previously advanced a pipeline of inhaled monoclonal antibody therapies for respiratory infections, leading to the 2018 spinoff of a clinical-stage company, Inhalon Biopharma, of Morrisville. Since then, Inhalon has raised over $50 million and is advancing a pipeline of four potentially first-in-class products.
More recently, Mucommune advanced a platform of interventions for improving female reproductive health, including a biologics-based non-hormonal contraception.
“We believe the exciting progress speaks directly to the talented team and a culture of innovation we have built,” Lai said.
Alongside the ARPA-H–funded project, Mucommune is expanding the application of its platform technology to develop in vivo CAR-T therapies addressing additional solid tumors and autoimmune diseases.
Mucommune’s current work builds on nearly a decade of pioneering pharmaceutical research on mucosal immunotherapeutics. The company has advanced multiple clinical-stage assets and incubated technology platforms that have received over $100 million in funding to date in support of clinical and preclinical development.
Mucommune was founded in 2016 based on pioneering “muco-trapping” antibody research at Johns Hopkins University and UNC. The company’s mission is to translate innovative immunoengineering approaches into transformative therapeutic platforms that address significant unmet medical needs.