PhoreMost Limited, a UK-based biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing drugs against intractable disease targets, and Oxford Biomedica plc, a gene and cell therapy group, have entered into a discovery collaboration to develop next-generation CAR-T cell therapies. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
 
As a part of the agreement, PhoreMost will deploy its in-house expertise and next-generation phenotypic screening platform, SITESEEKER, to identify therapeutic candidates for Oxford Biomedica’s LentiVector gene therapy delivery system. The program will initially focus on CAR-T therapy and aims to develop next-generation cell therapies with significantly improved efficacy and durability. 
 
Dr. Chris Torrance, CEO, PhoreMost, said, “This collaboration with Oxford Biomedica, a global pioneer in cell and gene therapies, is further recognition of the power of SITESEEKER, offering an exciting opportunity to discover and accelerate the development of clinical stage products. The natural complementarity between SITESEEKER and LentiVector offers great promise for this and future collaborations between the two companies.”
 
“We are excited to apply this next-generation technology to our LentiVector platform. The collaboration has the potential to deliver more effective CAR-T therapies, and we look forward to working closely with the PhoreMost team,” commented John Dawson, CEO of Oxford Biomedica.
 
SITESEEKER exploits protein shape diversity to find functionally active peptides linked to any chosen disease setting, enhancing the power of phenotypic screening and translation into therapeutic modalities. Based on proprietary protein interference, or ‘PROTEINi’, technology, SITESEEKER is able to systematically probe the entire proteome in a live cell environment to identify and exploit novel drug targets. 
 
Oxford Biomedica’s LentiVector platform enables the successful development of breakthrough gene and cell-based medicines, and through collaborations with pharmaceutical partners, has delivered the first FDA and EMA approved CAR-T cell therapy.