This week's Lab Notes includes a growing cell and gene therapy company finding a new home, an advance in the use of artificial intelligence to diagnose cancer and a collaboration agreement.
Here's the roundup:
Interius BioTherapeutics
The cell and gene therapy company spun out of the University of Pennsylvania has signed a lease deal to occupy about 17,700 square feet at Pennovation Lab in the Greys Ferry section of Philadelphia.
Interius was co-founded in 2019 by Dr. Saar Gill, a Penn Medicine hematologist/oncologist and expert in the field of immunotherapy. Her partner in the company is longtime life sciences industry entrepreneur Bruce Peacock, a former executive at local biotech firms including Centocor, Cephalon, Orthovita and Adolor.
The preclinical stage company is initially focused on treating hematologic malignancies using its proprietary gene delivery platform to generate chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells directly in vivo. The therapeutic approach bypasses the need for cell manipulations outside the body, and for the potentially toxic pre-conditioning chemotherapy required for standard CAR T-cell treatments.
Interius started out with a few lab benches at the neighboring Pennovation Center.
“Opening our first laboratory on the Pennovation Works campus allows us to remain in close proximity to the company’s scientific founder, Dr. Saar Gill, and to Penn’s world-renowned leadership in cell and gene therapy," said Dr. Phil Johnson, president and CEO of Interius BioTherapeutics.
About 70 companies are based at, and about 400 people work on, Pennovation's 23-acre campus in West Philadelphia.
Proscia
The Philadelphia digital and computational pathology services provider released study results on the company's technology that leverages artificial intelligence to automatically detect melanoma with a high degree of accuracy.
Melanoma is the most deadly type of skin cancer. Health officials estimate about 106,000 adults in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive melanoma of the skin thus year.
Proscia’s prospective study, conducted at Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Florida, demonstrated the real-world performance of its AI technology on an uncurated set of 1,422 sequential skin biopsies. The technology correctly identified invasive melanoma and melanoma in situ with a sensitivity of 93% and a specificity of 91%.
"Our AI not only identifies melanoma, a difficult diagnosis, but also accounts for the high degree of variation in disease to push the boundaries of deep learning in medicine," said Julianna Ianni, Proscia's vice president of AI research and development. "In doing so, it holds great promise to help pathologists deliver faster, more consistent diagnoses and improve patient outcomes."
Century Therapeutics
The Philadelphia cell therapy developer has formed a research collaboration with Outpace Bio to create next-generation smart cell therapies.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Their Initial program will focus on hematological malignancies, The agreement includes an option to expand to additional candidates.
The collaboration will bring together Century Therapeutics' (NASDAQ: IPSC) CAR and protein engineering expertise with Outpace’s protein design and synthetic biology capabilities to enhance the functionality of CAR therapy.
CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) therapies are type of cancer treatment in which a patient's immune system cells are enhanced, in the laboratory, to improve their ability to recognize and attack cancer cells.
“The collaboration with Outpace will further enhance our protein engineering capabilities and potentially accelerate development of our proprietary next generation CARs," said Lalo Flores, CEO of Century Therapeutics.
Aro Biotherapeutics
The Philadelphia biotechnology company focused on tissue-targeted genetic medicines appointed Dr. Mittie Doyle as its chief medical officer.
Doyle, a graduate of Princeton and Yale universities, previously held senior level roles at Shire Pharmaceuticals, Flexion Therapeutics and Alexion Pharmaceuticals.
