Marker Therapeutics Inc (MRKR)

[hanscott]

I think MRKR should consider doing a booster vaccination post-transfusion maybe using a method similar to this one developed by this lab at MIT.

(note: I promise the folks at MRKR and Baylor knew about this work long before it was published. Just an FYI, so don't bother sending them this link.)

Note we infuse 100-500x as many T-cells as they did in their work below, but still I think a booster vaccination to further stimulate the Multi-TAA T cells in vivo at some point post-infusion would be worth looking at.


New vaccine strategy boosts T-cell therapy

Super-charging a treatment for leukemia also makes it effective on solid tumors

In a study of mice, the researchers found that they could completely eliminate solid tumors in 60 percent of the animals that were given T-cell therapy along with the booster vaccination. Engineered T cells on their own had almost no effect.

"By adding the vaccine, a CAR-T cell treatment which had no impact on survival can be amplified to give a complete response in more than half of the animals,"

. . . The MIT team . . . could deliver vaccines more effectively to the lymph nodes by linking them to a fatty molecule called a lipid tail. . .

In addition to the lipid tail, the vaccine contains an antigen that stimulates the CAR-T cells once they reach the lymph nodes.

In tests in mice . . . given about 50,000 CAR-T cells but no vaccine, the CAR-T cells were nearly undetectable in the animals' bloodstream.

In contrast, when the booster vaccine was given the day after the T-cell infusion, and again a week later, CAR-T cells expanded until they made up 65 percent of the animals' total T cell population, two weeks after treatment.

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original paper

Enhanced CAR–T cell activity against solid tumors by vaccine boosting through the chimeric receptor

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6449/162