The medical journal Nature Medicine reports that Immunocore Limited has developed a revolutionary cancer-targeting technology that involves new reagents known as ImmTACs (Immune Mobilising mTCR against Cancer), which mobilize T-cells that kill cancer cells and overcome immune tolerance to cancer.
Whilst Immunocore’s most advanced agent, a drug named IMCgp100, is already undergoing clinical trials in the UK and US for the treatment of melanoma, their second oncology ImmTAC, IMCmage1, will be entering clinical trials in both countries later this year for the treatment of numerous poorly served cancer indications.
Although antibody-based drugs have become a mainstay of cancer treatments, their use is limited to the small fraction of cancer targets that consist of complete proteins on the cell surface. Unlike the majority of cancer targets that are out of reach for antibodies due to the fact that they are hidden inside cancerous cells, the T-cells employ T Cell Receptors (TCRs), which target the peptide antigens that are cancer markers on the cell surface and a marker for viral infection inside the cell. TCRs can potentially target any of the markers involved in cancer, and could therefore pave the way to develop drugs against cancers for which no antibody targets are known.
Given that the TCRs that are found naturally on the killer T-cells surface are primarily designed to recognize virally infected cells, they often lack the sensitivity to identify cancer and are therefore ignored by the immune system. Immunocore’s scientists managed to tackle this hurdle by boosting the ability of cancer-specific TCRs to bind to their targets with several million-fold higher affinity compared with natural TCRs.
By equipping these engineered TCRs with the ability to activate all the T- cells of the body to kill cancer, including those that would usually fail to recognize cancer, the team managed to prompt the entire immune system to fight against the disease. This new class of therapeutics has been named ImmTACs (Immune Mobilising mTCR Against Cancer).
Immunocore’s chief scientific officer, Dr Bent Jakobsen, explained:
“The main hindrance to better cancer treatments is finding ways of targeting malignant cells without harming the body’s normal cells too much. This is where TCRs are uniquely compelling: for TCRs, there are potentially more targets available than for all other types of cancer treatments combined.
However, for decades it has been thought that there was too little of each target on each cancer cell for it to be possible to make a reagent with which to find them. It’s a great pleasure, after fifteen years of research by a dedicated team of scientists, to be able to say that we have finally solved this problem.”
CEO of Immunocore, James Noble, declared:
“The power of this new technology lies in its ability to be used for a host of cancers that are currently very difficult to treat. We look forward to building on the emerging clinical data and generating a robust pipeline of products over the coming years.”
Written By Petra Rattue