Gilead, Kite Ink Deal with oNKo-innate for Cancer Immunotherapies

Three pharmaceutical companies recently formed a partnership to support the discovery and development of next-generation cancer immunotherapies. 

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The three-year cancer immunotherapy research collaboration between Gilead Sciences, Kite, a subsidiary of Gilead, and oNKo-innate will work to uncover cancer immunotherapies and engineered cell therapies focused on natural killer (NK) cells.

oNKo-innate is a discovery-stage biotechnology company based in Australia. The company is dedicated to target identification and pre-clinical immuno-oncology drug development, the company stated in the announcement. 

Gilead will leverage oNKo’s genome-wide screening techniques and its technology platform to discover novel immune cell targets that enhance NK cell anti-tumor immunity and create cell therapies. 

“With more than 20 years of collective academic expertise in NK cell biology, we have long believed in the potential for NK cells to play a role in cancer immunotherapy,” said Jai Rautela, PhD, co-founder and chief executive officer of oNKo-innate. 

“We look forward to bringing this NK cell expertise and our unique screening techniques into a collaboration with Gilead and Kite to serve a common goal of discovering new treatments for patients.”

Current cancer immunotherapy approaches focus on T cell mediated anti-tumor immunity, including checkpoint inhibition and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy.  NK cells are a group of lymphocytes (white blood cells) that are vital to the immune system. When combined, NK and T cells can attack cancer cells but have different tools for destroying tumor cells. 

Therefore, activated and targeted NK cells may uncover a different approach that could be potentially complementary and synergistic with T cell mediated anti-tumor strategies, the announcement stated.

oNKo-innate will carry out screens to validate targets and further Gilead’s immuno-oncology discovery programs. 

“Gilead is pleased to partner with oNKo-innate as a leader in this new and highly promising area of cancer immunotherapy,” said William A. Lee, PhD, executive vice president, research at Gilead Sciences. “We have a strategic focus of growing both our expertise and pipeline in immuno-oncology and we believe this exciting collaboration will support each of these objectives as we work to discover and develop novel cancer therapies for patients.”

Biopharmaceutical Kite focuses on chimeric antigen receptor and T cell receptor engineered cell therapies. oNKo-innate will create and evaluate NK constructs for Kite’s development of next-generation cell therapies.

“Kite is committed to building upon our leadership in cell therapy as we seek to meet the needs of patients with cancer,” said Peter Emtage, PhD, senior vice president of research at Kite. “Early clinical data utilizing adoptively transferred NK cells has been encouraging and we are excited by the opportunity to scientifically expand our capabilities in this area and to identify novel NK cell therapies to advance toward clinical development.”

Last month, a Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) report found that there are 362 investigational cell and gene therapies in clinical development. 

The five gene therapies mentioned in the report were for the treatment of hemophilia A, hemophilia B, multiple myeloma, Stargardt disease, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. 

The first cell and gene therapy was approved in 2017 and various therapies have been previously approved by FDA and are currently helping patients battling chronic conditions such as cancer, eye diseases, and rare hereditary diseases.

At the beginning of March, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) held the first-ever gene therapy clinical trial, BRILLIANCE, to address blindness-causing gene mutation, LCA10.

Using new gene-editing tool, CRISPR, the clinical trial performed in vivo gene editing to treat Leber congenital amaurosis 10, a rare form of inherited blindness. During this clinical trial, one patient living with LCA10 was treated. This is a promising outcome, as patients currently affected by the disease have had no prior treatment options.

“This dosing is a truly historic event – for science, for medicine, and most importantly for people living with this eye disease,” said Cynthia Collins, president and CEO of Editas Medicine. 

“The first patient dosed in the BRILLIANCE clinical trial marks a significant milestone toward delivering on the promise and potential of CRISPR medicines to durably treat devastating diseases such as LCA10. We look forward to sharing future updates from this clinical trial and our ocular program.”