Targeting Immunosuppressive Microenvironments
What is TGF-β
High cure rates were the promise of T cell therapy, but the benefits thus far have been largely limited to hematological malignancies.
Solid tumors, which account for 90% of cancer diagnoses and deaths, present the additional challenge of a tumor microenvironment (TME), that is often inhospitable to T cells due to the presence of immunologically suppressive cytokines such as transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β).
What does TGF-β do in cancer
Many patients’ cancers are surrounded by a TGF-β–rich TME that greatly hinders the T cells’ ability to find, penetrate, and eliminate the tumor mass. In addition, TGF-β is highly immunosuppressive, limiting T cell-mediated killing.
What can TGF-β Bispecific CARs do
ImmPACT Bio’s TGF-β CAR platform technology is the first CAR that targets a soluble cytokine. Our data shows that the TGF-β CAR has the capacity to alter the TME, and enable immune cells to enter and become activated in the tumor.
Our advancing bispecific TGF-β platform simultaneously targets a solid-tumor antigen while converting TGF-β into an activating signal for our engineered T cells, resulting in much more robust T cell expansion and tumor-cell killing.
Here is how the TGF-β Bispecific CAR technology works
