Cancer immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that harnesses and re-directs the immune system to ward off cancer (video). Immunotherapies take advantage of the fact that there are often tumor-associated antigens (TAA) on cancer cells that mark the cells for detection and destruction by the immune system.

One very promising approach to cancer immunotherapy is called adoptive T-cell therapy, where T-cells are removed from a cancer patient, genetically re-engineered to incorporate a receptor, such as  a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) or a recombinant T cell receptor (rTCR), that allows the cells to recognize TAA on cancer cells, and are then introduced back into the patient.  Adoptive T-cell therapy is now widely recognized as a breakthrough technology with the potential to become a curative option for certain types of tumors. However, persistent scaling challenges remain based on the highly personalized nature of the therapy.

To overcome this challenge, Precision BioSciences is focused on applying its ARCUS genome editing technology to develop cell based immunotherapies derived from healthy donors instead of the patient, enabling consistent, scalable manufacturing more comparable to traditional biopharmaceuticals. It is hoped that this approach will overcome the manufacturing-related limitations with existing approaches, greatly expand the number and types of patients that can be treated with adoptive T-cell therapies, and enable a broader range of cancers to be targeted.