Fate Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in developing programmed cellular therapeutics to treat life-threatening diseases, has entered into a research collaboration with Regents of the University of Minnesota for the development of natural killer (NK) cell-based cancer immunotherapeutics.

The collaboration will foster the advancement of two distinct therapeutic programmes, both of which aim to leverage the inherent ability of NK cells to rapidly detect and effectively destroy malignant cells without prior antigen exposure or administration of a patient's own immune cells. While adoptive transfer of NK cells has demonstrated anti-tumour activity, the isolation and generation of clinically-relevant quantities of homogeneous populations of highly-persistent NK cells has been challenging. Fate Therapeutics will utilise its cell programming approach and proprietary induced pluripotent stem cell technology under the collaboration to pursue the development of optimized "off-the-shelf" NK cell-based cancer therapeutics.

"Cell-based immunotherapies are rapidly emerging as one of the most promising treatment paradigms for many oncology indications, and NK cell-based therapeutics in particular may offer a compelling off-the-shelf therapeutic approach to adoptive cancer immunotherapy," said Christian Weyer, M.D., M.A.S., president and chief executive officer of Fate Therapeutics.

"The University of Minnesota has pioneered the basic research and clinical investigation of NK cell-based therapeutics, and we look forward to collaborating with their expert team in the development of NK cell-based immunotherapies that may provide distinct advantages in transforming the treatment of cancer."

The antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity programme will be led by renowned NK cell biologist Jeffrey S. Miller, M.D., deputy director of the Masonic Cancer Center and the deputy director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Miller and his team have recently identified an adaptive NK cell phenotype that exhibits a unique metabolic programme shown in preclinical studies to promote long-term persistence in vivo, and that has an epigenetic profile similar to that of cytotoxic T lymphocytes, which may induce potent anti-tumour activity against a variety of tumours.

Under the collaboration, Dr. Miller and Fate Therapeutics will apply the company's cell programming approach with the intent to optimize NK cell persistence and cytotoxicity and accelerate the development of a programmed adaptive NK cellular therapeutic for use in combination with tumour-specific monoclonal antibodies.

"We are excited about the prospects of utilizing cell programming to optimize the anti-tumour properties of the phenotype, and look forward to collaborating with Fate Therapeutics in the development of programmed adaptive NK cell-based immunotherapeutics to treat cancer," said Dr. Miller. "Our data demonstrate that the adaptive phenotype is functionally distinct from conventional NK cells upon triggering through the CD16 receptor, which may make these cells ideal effectors to elicit an enhanced antibody-mediated cytotoxic effect."

The second programme, focusing on induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived targeted cancer immunotherapy, will be led by Dan Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and a member of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Kaufman has pioneered the derivation of NK cells from pluripotent stem cells (iNK cells), including the establishment of a clinically-compatible culture system and differentiation protocol that enable the efficient generation of large quantities of cytotoxic NK cells. Leveraging the company's proprietary iPSC technology, Dr. Kaufman and Fate Therapeutics will genetically-modify iPSCs to express tumour cell-targeting modalities, creating an immune-engineered pluripotent cell source for use in the derivation of off-the-shelf NK cell-based targeted immunotherapies.

"The introduction of antigen-specificity by genetically engineering induced pluripotent stem cells, combined with the unlimited proliferative potential and differentiation capacity of such cells, may prove to be the cornerstone of off-the-shelf targeted cancer immunotherapy," said Dr. Kaufman. "We look forward to developing engineered iNK cell-based cancer therapeutics in collaboration with Fate Therapeutics that may overcome key limitations of adaptive autologous cell therapy including the requirement to isolate and engineer cells for each individual patient."

In consideration for funding the collaboration activities, Fate Therapeutics has the option to secure exclusive patent rights to all intellectual property arising under the collaboration. Additionally, Fate Therapeutics has secured an exclusive option to certain background intellectual property of the University of Minnesota. Drs. Miller and Kaufman will serve as advisors to the company in the development of hematopoietic cell-based immunotherapies, including those derived from induced pluripotent stem cells.