News Releases
Dr. Cynthia Bamdad, CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies, will present a poster entitled, “1st-in-Human CAR T for Solid Tumors Targets the MUC1 Transmembrane Cleavage Product” at the annual meeting of AACR in Atlanta, March 31-April 3, 2019. The poster presents safety and efficacy data for a CAR T cancer immunotherapy that targets a novel antigen that is present on over 75% of solid tumor cancers. It also highlights additional antibodies that recognize different forms of the growth factor receptor. IND-enabling safety data from human tissue studies and new in vivo data will be presented.
Minerva developed a CAR T therapeutic that guides patient immune cells to the tumor via an antibody that binds to a novel tumor-associated antigen called MUC1* (muk 1 star). The transmembrane cleavage product, MUC1*, is the powerful growth factor receptor that drives tumor growth. This will be a first-in-human trial since every other MUC1-targeting therapeutic, tested in humans, targeted full-length MUC1. Studies show that MUC1 cleavage increases as tumor stage increases; previous attempts targeted epitopes on the portion of MUC1 that is shed from the cell surface after cleavage. The shed portion of MUC1 is the only part of the molecule that has sites for O-linked glycosylation. Therapeutics that target aberrant O-linked glycans, such as 5E5 and SM3, miss MUC1*, which has no sites for O-glycosylation, and only enrich for the tumor-promoting MUC1* form.
The human scFv that targets the anti-MUC1* CAR T binds to an epitope that is masked on full-length MUC1, so the CAR T does not bind to normal, healthy cells. In addition, the antibody competitively inhibits the binding of metastatic growth factor NME7AB to the MUC1* growth factor receptor.
If you are attending AACR, stop by Hall B, Georgia World Congress Center, Poster Section 22: Adoptive Cell Therapy, Poster #2323, on Monday, April 1, 2019 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM to meet Dr. Bamdad and the Minerva team.