Exam 4 Cell-based Therapeutics 1 Flashcards
What is the rank of the different types of medicines from smallest to largest?
small molecules → large molecules → biologics → cell-based therapies
What are the two classes of cell-based therapies?
- stem cells and stem cell-derived products
2. immunotherapies
What is some information about stem cells and stem cell-derived products as cell-based therapies?
- does not involve immune cells → does not mobilize the immune system
- stem cells can differentiate into any tissue and it utilizes the cell as a drug
- examples: hematopoietic, mesenchymal, embryonic, umbilical cord blood
What is some things to know about immunotherapies?
- involve immune cells → activates the immune system
- cancer vaccines and cell based immune therapies
- examples: dendritic cells (typically vaccines), genetically modified lymphocytes, activated lymphocytes (TIL, NK, T), cancer cells chemically modified or unmodified
- immunotherapies include native and cell-based gene therapies (genetically engineered lymphocytes)
What are the two types of cell-based therapies?
- stem cell therapy
2. engineered (immune) cell-based therapy
What are some things to know about stem cell therapy?
- does not involve immune cells
- uses stem cells that can virtually become any tissue/cell in the body depending on the source
- embryonic cells are pluripotent which means they can become any type of cell
- utilizes cells that are unspecialized and can be self-renewed and are pluripotent
What are some things to know about engineered (immune) cell based therapy?
- the drug substance is a gene vector
2. utilizes mature blood cells (immune cells aka lymphocytes) that will typically get re-infused back to the patient
What does cell based therapy entail?
engineered/modified cells
What does native cell therapy entail?
not modified cells
What is the nomenclature of cell based therapy?
- cell based therapy is immunotherapy when it utilizes immune cells such as CAR-T
- cell based therapy is just cell therapy when it does not involve the immune system such as stem cell tissue regeneration
What is a stem cell?
a single cell that can replicate itself or differentiate into many cell types (can even become a blood cell that can then be used for immunotherapy)
What are the uses of stem cells in cell therapy?
- can be used in cell replacement therapy (for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, arthritis)
- adult stem cells are less versatile than embryonic stem cells (since they are restricted to whatever organ they came from)
- only 22 embryonic cell lines are eligible for federal funding in the US
- no approved FDA products based on tissue-regenerative stem cells yet
What are the three different types of stem cells?
- totipotent
- pluripotent
- multipotent
What are totipotent stem cells?
each cell can develop into a new individual → examples include cells from early (1-3 days) embryos
What are pluripotent stem cells?
cells can form any (over 200) cell types → examples include some cells of blastocyst (5 to 14 days)
What are multipotent stem cells?
cells differentiated but can form a number of other tissues → examples are fetal tissue, cord blood, and adult stem cells
What is unique about multipotent stem cells?
can only become a certain tissue from where it came from
What types of stem cells are most versatile?
totipotent and pluripotent
With cell therapy clinical trials, which cells are most utilized?
hematopoietic cells → mesenchymal stem cells → lymphocytes → dendritic cells
What are some examples of cancer immunotherapies?
- checkpoint inhibitors
- cytokines → proteins that signal the immune system
- cancer vaccines
- oncolytic viruses
- adoptive cell transfer → somebody adopts your cells that gets transferred to an individual for therapy
What are the types of cell therapies that are immunotherapies?
- adoptive cell transfer → involving CAR-T, CAR-NK, TILs, and native T/NK cells
- cancer vaccines → involving dendritic cells
Any cell based therapy that is genetically modified is also a what?
gene therapy
What is gene therapy?
putting a gene into a vector or delivery system and infuse it into the patient in vivo as therapy
What is cell-based therapy?
uses cells as a vector (aka a carrier) in which you take immune cells and engineer them to infuse it back into the patient → cell becomes drug product and gene is the drug substance
With cell-based immunotherapies, what does it mean for it to be expanded?
the cells are taken out of the blood and expanded in a lab to get billions of cells that can then be put into a bag to be infused back to the patient
What can you do with dendritic cells as cell-based immunotherapy?
dendritic cells can be expanded with or without activation → lead to dendritic cell vaccine
What can you do with T cells for cell-based immunotherapy?
- expansion with or without activation → TILs
- add TCR (T cell receptor) → TCR
- add CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) → CAR-T
What can you do with NK cells with cell-based immunotherapies?
add CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) → make CAR-NK (but since it was not expanded, it is not as durable as the other therapeutics)
What are the different types of adoptive cell-based immunotherapies?
- native immune cells (activated) → most common in which you take cells, expand them, and put it back into the patient
- TIL (tumor infiltrating lymphocytes) → cells associated with a tumor and are primed/activated to fight cancer easily
- TCR (T cell receptors) → engineered cells based on cell specific receptors
- CAR-T or CAR-NK (chimeric antigen receptor T or NK cells) → synthetic genetic construct targeting a tumor antigen, CAR macrophages under development →→ basically genes that force immune cells to find the cancer and stick to them like velcro
What is taa and tsa?
taa = tumor associated antigen → other cells that can carry/express antigens that cancer cells express
tsa = tumor specific antigen → every cancer cells express proteins on surface (tsa) but healthy cells do not
Most cell-based therapy clinical trials involve which therapy type?
most products are CAR-T cells (has been studied the longest and FDA has approved products)
What are some examples of products that are regulated by the FDA Office of Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapy?
- somatic cell therapies
- gene therapies → such as cell-based therapies like CAR-T which utilize immune cells and are genetically engineered
- viral therapies like oncolytic viruses
- immunotherapies like tumor vaccines and checkpoint inhibitors
- xenotransplantation
- tissue engineering
- OCTGT product + device
About how many cell-based therapies have been approved by the FDA?
almost 20 therapies in the US! in which 5 are CAR-T therapies that target blood cancers and the rest are hematopoietic stem cell transplants
What are the 5 approved CAR-T cell based therapies that have been approved by the FDA?
- Kymriah for B-cell ALL (leukemia)
- Yescarta for Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
- Tecartus for mantle cell lymphoma
- Abecma for multiple myeloma
- Breyanzi for large B-cell lymphoma