An in vivo CAR T manufacturing implant; plus Seer, Kither and more

North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists described in Nature Biotechnology an implantable scaffold, dubbed MASTER (Multifunctional Alginate Scaffold for T Cell Engineering and Release), that generated and released functional CAR T cells and controlled distal tumor growth in a xenograft mouse model of lymphoma.

When seeded with human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and viral vectors encoding a CD19-targeting CAR, the scaffold, which is subcutaneously implanted, provided an interface for gene transfer and mediated release of resulting CAR T cells. The authors wrote that MASTER “streamlines in vivo CAR-T cell manufacturing and reduces processing time to a single day.” ...