Marker Therapeutics Inc (MRKR)

[rfj1862]

Proprietary Non-Viral, Plasmid-Free Platform

I'm not Phantom but this isn't a huge advance, although it is a nice to have. The word "amplicon" suggests that it does not integrate into the host DNA, which reduces the risk for insertional mutagenesis. CAR-T cells are currently produced by packaging the nucleic acid payload as RNA into a virus; when the virus enters the cell the RNA is reverse-transcribed to DNA and then inserted directly into the cell's DNA.

The theoretical risk is that the DNA will insert somewhere in the genome where it can turn on a gene involved in something bad or shut off a gene involved in something good.

There may be other minor advantages as well--maybe quicker and easier to produce since it does not require packaging in a viral vector?

Keep in mind I didn't even take a glance at the literature on this process so there may be other advantages.