To treat autoimmune illnesses, Quell Therapeutics is creating cell engineering.
Quell Therapeutics, one of the most promising UK biotech startups, and AstraZeneca have agreed to collaborate on research projects and to license their intellectual property in order to create medicines for two autoimmune disorders. The pharmaceutical behemoth will provide Quell an initial payment of $85 million and up to a further $2 billion if it achieves certain development and commercialization objectives over the coming several years. Through the use of genetic engineering, Quell’s method enables control over a patient’s immune response in “regulatory T-cells,” or Tregs. This lessens an overreactive immune reaction in particular regions linked to a disease. The business’s Treg technology is an advancement of the Car-T treatments, which have proven to be extraordinarily effective in the treatment of cancer.
Type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease are the two illnesses that the AstraZeneca agreement is aimed at treating. In addition, Quell intends to begin a clinical trial of a cell treatment intended to stop liver transplant rejection this year. Prior to the AstraZeneca transaction, Quell, based in London, had collected around $220 million from a group of investors headed by Syncona, a business that specializes in cell and gene therapy start-ups and now owns 33.7% of Quell.
According to Syncona’s assessment of its investment, Quell is worth about $300 million in total. Six immunologists from King’s College London, University College London, and Hannover Medical School formed the startup in 2019. Iain McGill, CEO, stated that cooperation with AstraZeneca, “our first major partner,” will speed up the application of our Treg platform in autoimmune illnesses, where there is, in his opinion, a significant possibility to reset immunological tolerance and produce long-lasting effects for patients.
“We are moving in a big way into cell therapies outside oncology, where they have been remarkably effective for treating some cancers,” said Mene Pangalos, head of biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca. The Quell procedure consists of removing a patient’s Tregs, which are white blood cells that have developed to restrict the immune system’s ability to overreact, and genetically altering them so that they exclusively affect particular regions.
The bloodstream is then infused once more with them. The Tregs will be made to suppress the immunological onslaught on insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, which is what causes type-1 diabetes, which normally develops in childhood. Before patients lose all of their insulin-producing cells, McGill added, “we will need to do it.” “They should continue to be free of diabetes if we can stop further attacks and keep enough beta cells alive. We believe we can accomplish it, and the result would be transformative. Car-T cancer therapies also employ this “autologous” procedure, in which the patient’s own cells are modified in a lab. McGill thinks that by using it to treat autoimmune disease, the complicated and pricey surgery could be made simpler and more affordable.
According to Martin Murphy, head of Syncona and Quell, the company may eventually switch to a “allogeneic” procedure that is significantly less expensive and allows the use of pre-existing cells from different donors. “Allogeneic therapies are proving to be so effective,” he added, “switching the mood in the markets away from them recently.” “It would be replaced if an allogeneic therapy could be developed that was just as effective as autologous therapy. However, none has been successful in doing so.
