Synthetic engineering of immune cells; plus Genentech’s bispecific for Netherton and more

Two papers published in Science present new methods for synthetic engineering of immune cell function, applied to enhance the efficacy of T cell cancer therapies.

Researchers from Boston University and colleagues, including Arsenal Biosciences Inc. co-founder Kole Roybal and Senti Biosciences Senti Biosciences Inc. (NASDAQ:SNTI) co-founder Wilson Wong, presented dual-switch T cells, engineered with a synthetic zinc finger transcription regulator (synZiFTR) control circuit, that increased CAR T antitumor efficacy in mouse tumor models. The synZiFTR technology was applied to engineer gene switches and circuits that enable precise control of therapeutically relevant genes in primary T cells using existing small molecule inducers. The authors used the circuits to instruct the T cells to sequentially activate multiple cellular programs, such as proliferation and antitumor activity. ...