{"id":32900,"date":"2018-03-20T16:05:39","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T20:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=32900"},"modified":"2018-03-21T12:55:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T16:55:27","slug":"novartis-licenses-biomaterial-for-cancer-immunotherapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=32900","title":{"rendered":"Novartis Licenses Biomaterial for Cancer Immunotherapy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Polymer<\/a>
Polymer device that releases cancer immunotherapies (Wyss Institute, Harvard University)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

20 March 2018. Drug maker Novartis is licensing from a lab at Harvard University a biocompatible material designed to provide delivery of treatments that invoke the immune system to fight cancer. Financial aspects of the collaboration and licensing agreement between Novartis<\/a>, in Basel, Switzerland, and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute<\/a>, a biomedical engineering research center, were not disclosed.<\/p>\n

David Mooney<\/a>, one of the Wyss Institute’s core faculty, studies the way materials simulate environments that encourage or limit signals among cells in the body. A top priority of Mooney’s lab<\/a> is materials that support the immune system in fighting cancer, with the goal of boosting the effectiveness of emerging cancer therapies harnessing the immune system. Earlier this month, Science & Enterprise<\/a> reported on tests in lab mice of a biocompatible material designed by Mooney and colleagues that loads up with proteins from a patient\u2019s tumors to induce immune reactions that fight cancer.<\/p>\n

Novartis is licensing a technology from Mooney’s lab that performs similar functions. In this case, a sponge-like biocompatible and degradable polymer like that used in sutures is about the size of an aspirin tablet, and infused with inactivated antigens, substances stimulating an immune response, from a patient’s tumor. The polymer sponge, implanted near the lymph nodes, also contains molecules that attract dendritic cells<\/a> in the immune system, which capture and serve up antigens to stimulate an immune response, including from white blood cells called T-cells.<\/p>\n

The sponge implant releases the inactivated antigens which travel to the nearby lymph nodes, where they attract the dendritic cells and stimulate T-cells to find and attack cancer cells. In addition, dendritic cells in the lymph nodes encourage other white blood cells in the immune system known as B-cells, to form long-term protection against the invaders.<\/p>\n

An early-stage clinical trial<\/a> is testing this immunotherapy delivery technique among patients with melanoma, an advanced form of skin cancer, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Preclinical studies of the biomaterial were conducted by Glenn Dranoff<\/a>, on the Wyss Institute faculty at the time, but now heads the exploratory immuno-oncology unit at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research.<\/p>\n

This technology, says Mooney, can provide an alternative to gene therapies that require removal and reprogramming of T-cells from a patient, then returning the modified T-cells as a cancer treatment. “We have demonstrated,” says Mooney in a Wyss Institute statement, “that these biomaterials can be easily delivered to patients, provide sustained and local release of immune-modulating factors, and bypass the need for modification of cells outside the body.”<\/p>\n

The agreement calls for Novartis and Wyss Institute to collaborate on further research and development of biomaterials that deliver cancer immunotherapies. The deal gives Novartis a license to develop Wyss Institute’s biomaterials designed for cancer immunotherapies into treatments for specific, but undisclosed targets.<\/p>\n

The following video tells more about the immunotherapy delivery technology.<\/p>\n