Case Study: Accelerating the Development of CAR

Carisma Therapeutics is taking a novel approach to cancer immunotherapy by utilizing macrophages recruited to solid tumors as part of an immune response. Carisma aims to use chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) macrophages to prime the immune system to kill tumors. One of Carisma’s goals is to modify macrophages using a novel gene therapy that trains the immune system to specifically target and kill HER2-positive cancer cells.

To develop this novel therapeutic, Carisma aimed to produce an engineered adenoviral vector encoding a CAR receptor, which would readily transduce human macrophages and enable these phagocytic cells to target and ingest cancer cells. They also needed a scalable and high-titre production process to manufacture sufficient adenoviral vectors to transduce billions of macrophages with the CAR receptor.

Carisma worked with OXGENE for adenoviral plasmid and vector engineering and pre-clinical viral vector production, and with WuXi Advanced Therapies for integrated adenoviral vector manufacture and testing.