What is Cell Therapy?

Cell therapy or immunotherapy involves the transfer of immune cells, which are modified for enhanced activity against target cells, in patients with various types of cancer or autoimmune diseases.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that combines the unique attributes of immune T cells and B cells into a single entity to efficiently target and eliminate pathogenic cells. The goal of CAR T-cell therapy is to provide long-lasting improvement of disease manifestations without the need for continual medical intervention.

Many CAR T-based treatments currently being studied involve using a patient’s own cells (autologous therapy). However, the process of obtaining, modifying, expanding, and re-infusing these autologous cells is complicated, time-consuming, and very costly. This process can also lead to variations in the quality and effectiveness of the cells. In addition, autologous therapy is available at only a limited number of specialized medical centers.

An alternative to autologous therapy is the use of healthy donor cells (allogeneic therapy). However, this approach also shares the complexity and expense of autologous cell therapy.

A primary challenge of cell therapy is the development of these treatments in a manner that is reliable, affordable, and more readily available to patients.

How are Fate’s Cell Therapies Different?

Fate has developed a treatment approach that we refer to as “cell programming.” The process begins by reprogramming mature skin or blood cells back into an embryonic-like pluripotent state that gives the cell the ability to turn into any type of cell in the body. These reprogrammed cells are known as human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), We modify these iPSCs to control how they function. We can then make a master version of the modified cells, which can be used repeatedly to produce CAR T and CAR NK cell therapy products. Finally, we guide these cells to become the specific type of cells needed for a particular treatment.

• Fate’s cell therapies:
• Are specially designed for targeted treatments
• Have controls to manage how the cells work
• Are consistent and uniform in their makeup
• Can be produced in large quantities at a lower cost
• Can be combined with other standard treatments
• Can be stored for easy access, making them available when needed (like other injectable or intravenous treatments)