Prescient partners with global cancer heavyweight to develop new treatments

Prescient Therapeutics (ASX:PTX) has formed a cancer research partnership with the world-renowned Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, ‘Peter Mac’, a leader in new clinical treatments for cancer to develop CAR-T cell therapy technologies.

The research program is being led by Professor Phil Darcy, head of cancer immunotherapy at Peter Mac’s Melbourne laboratory and will seek to produce technologies that can complement existing CAR-T cancer treatment approaches.

Prescient is the only ASX company that is developing CAR-T programs and it will own the intellectual property rights stemming from the research program.

The company’s CAR-T cancer treatment reprograms the Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CAR) on the outside of T-Cells to enable them to better target and eradicate cancer cells within patients.

Prescient Therapeutics chief executive Steven Yatomi-Clarke said the company’s research partnership with Peter Mac would greatly enhance efforts to advance new cancer treatments that would benefit patients.

“We look forward to working closely with Peter Mac as we employ our knowledge of targeted therapies and growing standing in cellular therapies to generate technologies that will be relevant for the CAR-T field,” Yatomi-Clarke said.

Peter Mac research will advance PTX’s treatments

The research program at Peter Mac is an important addition to the Cell Therapy Enhancements (CTE) programs in Prescient’s treatments pipeline.

Prescient develops personalised medical approaches to cancer including targeted and cellular therapies such as its OmniCar immune receptor platform, an advanced version of CAR-T cancer treatment.

The company’s CTE programs aim to create efficacy and efficiency enhancements that are relevant to third parties in the cell therapy field, namely CAR-T, which may incorporate these into their own programs under licence.

Professor Darcy said the research with Prescient aimed to reprogram the microenvironment of cancer tumours to achieve better results with the CAR-T therapy.

“CAR-T therapy has shown strong therapeutic activity in certain haematological malignancies, however, the effects in solid cancers have been poor to date,” he said.

“The approach we are exploring with Prescient may reprogram the tumour microenvironment that results in significantly enhancing CAR-T cell anti-tumour activity.”

Boosting the coffers by $6.5m

Prescient has launched a capital raising for $6.5m via a share purchase plan to fund the expansion of its line of cancer treatments, including clinical trials of its PTX 100 and 200 products, and OmniCAR platform.

The SPP share issue is priced at 5.5c, a 15 per cent discount to its volume-weighted average share price prior to the SPP announcement, and it closes August 17.