Oral Presentation CD1-MR1 2024

Harnessing the potential of CAR-iNKT cells to treat cancer (#84)

Nicole van der Weerden 1
  1. Arovella Therapeutics, Carlton, VIC, Australia

Arovella is developing CAR-iNKT cells as an allogeneic cell therapy to treat a range of blood cancers and solid tumours. CAR-iNKT cells are dual targeting for cancers that express CD1d and have superior activity over CAR-T cells in animal models of these tumours. It's proprietary manufacturing process maintains a high proportion of CD4- iNKT cells which display excellent cytotoxic activity. Arovella is exploring several strategies to utilise CAR-iNKT cells to tackle solid tumours including incorporating cytokine technology to enhance proliferation and persistance of iNKT cells in vivo and also developing a novel Claudin 18.2-targeting CAR-iNKT cell product for use in gastric cancer, (GC), gastroesophageal junction cancer (GEJC) and pancreatic cancer (PC). Arovella is also combining it’s CD19-targeting CAR-iNKT cells with an oncolytic virus which is programmed to induce CD19 expression in solid tumour cells.