Pierre and Marie Curie University spins off cell therapy technology

Between 20 and 60 per cent of leukemia patients who receive a bone marrow graft die within six months because the graft is rejected by their immune systems. Now French researchers have developed a cell therapy based on modified T cells that could reduce the risk of rejection to under 5 per cent, and are looking for first-round funding.

LTKfarma has been founded by David Klatzman, director of the Biology and Therapeutics Laboratory for Immune Pathologies (CNRS/University of Pierre and Marie Curie) and head of the Biotherapy Centre at the Pitié-La Salpêtrière Hospital, who led the research with colleagues Francois Lemoine and Jose Cohen from Inserm, the French medical research agency.

The new company has recruited prominent biotech executives, including Laurent de Narbonne, former international marketing director at Biogen Idec, and Alain Clergeot, president of Chugai France.

According to de Narbonne, chairman of LTKfarma, “The company has not yet raised venture money but intends to do so.”

LTKfarma has filed 31 patents, of which 26 have been granted, and is about to start a Phase I/II clinical trial for its lead product, the leukaemia treatment TK54.

The product delivers the gene for an enzyme that transforms the inactive prodrug ganciclovir into a form that is toxic to dividing cells, prompting apoptosis, or programmed cell death. The target cells into which the gene is introduced die only if they are in the presence of ganciclovir and in division. This is the case with the T-cells present in bone marrow grafts, which cause the immune system to reject the graft.

TK54 has been developed up to clinical trials with a €450,000 grant awarded after it won the special jury prize in last year’s 7th national Business and Innovative Technologies contest organised by the Ministry of Research and France's innovation agency, OSEO ANVAR.

LTKfarma has received a further €1.5 million from Assistance Publique, the administrator of Paris’s hospitals, and AFM, a medical charity.

According to de Narbonne, the technology platform is applicable also to autoimmune diseases such as scleroderma, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.