Pipeline | Plasticell UK

iPSC-derived Allogeneic Cancer Immunotherapies

Plasticell is developing ‘off-the-shelf’ cellular immunotherapies for patients with haematological malignancies and solid tissue tumours.

Immunotherapies have revolutionised cancer treatment by programming immune system cells to attack malignant lesions. Cellular immunotherapy is currently dominated by CAR-T therapies which are personalised medicines, made for a single patient from their own blood cells, using a complex and costly manufacturing process. Plasticell is developing alternative immunotherapies that can be manufactured at large scale and provided ‘off-the-shelf’ to treat multiple patients.

Our products are manufactured from an unlimited source of iPSCs which have been modified using proprietary genome editing technologies to engineer product quality attributes such as greater tumour-specific toxicity and increased patient safety. We use our combinatorial stem cell screening technology, CombiCult®, to develop robust differentiation platforms that convert engineered iPSCs into specific immune effector cell types such as natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages.

‍The global market for cellular immunotherapies was US$ 7bn in 2022.

Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapies

Plasticell is developing methods of expanding hematopoietic stem cells, which can be used in the treatment of over 70 different therapeutic indications.

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is the most successful and widely used stem cell therapy to date. It is used to treat conditions where the resident immune system has been compromised through disease or chemo-radiotherapeutic treatment. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) can be obtained from mobilised peripheral blood (mPB), bone marrow (BM) or cord blood (CB), with CB offering a relatively higher proportion of stem cells and a significantly lower risk of rejection. However, each CB unit contains only enough cells to treat small children and therefore methods of expanding the stem cells are required.

Plasticell has developed potent media compositions to expand hematopoetic stem cells in vitro by factors of up to 500-fold and is developing GMP-compliant bioprocesses for manufacture of CB and BM life-saving therapies.
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The global market for cord blood therapeutics is estimated to be US$6.5bn per year and growing.

Thrombocytopenia and Anaemia

Plasticell is developing manufacture of high-value blood products from pluripotent stem cells, to provide a safe, artificial alternative to donor-derived material.

Inefficient blood clotting owing to lack of platelets (thrombocytopoenia) is associated with chemotherapy, radiation exposure, organ transplant and certain autoimmune diseases. Platelets for transfusion are collected from blood donors, however each donor unit must undergo rigorous safety testing and has a short (<2 days) shelf life which can affect the supply chain. In addition, prolonged treatment with allogeneic platelets leads to life-threatening immune rejection (alloimmune platelet refractoriness) in a proportion of patients.

Plasticell manufactures platelets in vitro through the directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). This approach has the potential to offer an ongoing, pathogen-free supply of universal platelets for general use, as well as to provide in vitro-derived autologous platelets for individuals suffering from alloimmune platelet refractoriness.

A parallel programme to produce red blood cells from iPSCs is also underway. Since platelets and red blood cells do not have a cell nucleus, they are amongst the safest therapeutic products to be derived from pluripotent stem cells.

The global market for platelets is estimated to be US$2bn per year while that for red blood cells is US$10bn per year.

Therapeutic Pipeline: Pushing the boundaries of regenerative medicine

iPSC-derived Allogeneic Cancer Immunotherapies

Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapies

Thrombocytopenia and Anaemia