Verismo and UPenn ink cell therapy manufacturing deal

Verismo Therapeutics and the Clinical Cell and Vaccine Production Facility (CVPF) at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) have expanded their partnership to include cell therapy manufacturing.

The Penn spinout Verismo, a clinical-stage chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T company, began its partnership with the University in June 2022. The agreement detailed Verismo would fund additional preclinical studies to be conducted by Penn researchers on its KIR-CAR platform to develop and use this therapy to treat solid tumors.

Now, the partnership has expanded and will include clinical cell production of Verismo’s KIR-CAR-T cell therapy SynKIR-110 by the CVPF at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine for testing and possibly use in a Phase I clinical trial.

DepositPhotos/gwolters

Verismo’s KIR-CAR platform is a dual-chain CAR-T cell therapy and can maintain antitumor T-cell activity in complex solid tumor environments. Moreover, the firm said it can be used with various additional technologies, including advanced cell manufacturing and programming, in vivo gene engineering, combinational therapies, and allogenic cellular therapies.

CVPF, a cellular manufacturing facility, has the capabilities to produce cellular therapy products for Phase 1 clinical trials and can move therapies from the bench to the patient.

“We are very excited to partner with the CVPF at Penn to make SynKIR-110 for a first-in-human clinical trial,” said Bryan Kim, CEO at Verismo.

“CVPF has a long history of producing cutting-edge cell therapies including the first FDA-approved genetically-engineered cell product as well as the first use of CRISPR-edited cells used in human clinical trials. Together, we will be well-positioned to manufacture SynKIR-110 for Phase I clinical testing.”

The manufacturing agreement between Verismo and CVPF has a joint goal of developing advanced therapies to provide new treatment options for different human diseases.