Eurostars, a European joint programme, co-funded from the national budgets of several EUREKA countries and by the European Union through Horizon 2020 has awarded, through a highly-competitive selection process, the Project “A novel modified natural killer (NK) cell immunotherapy for the treatment of solid tumours” – MODIFY-NK.
The consortium composed of Glycostem Therapeutics BV (The Netherlands), YUMAB GmbH (Germany), Explicyte (France) and OZ Biosciences SAS (France) will deliver a novel cell-based therapy to treat solid tumours with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) expressing allogeneic (i.e. from a patient independent donor) natural killer (NK) cells. These CARs strongly improve solid tumour targeting and killing potential. The efficacy of this clinical grade CAR-NK cell product will be validated in a preclinical solid tumour model and the therapy will be ready for clinical studies within 24 months after completion of this project.
The total reward amounts to €3,626,860.00 for the 3-year programme.
“Combining the key expertise of the consortium members will bring innovative insights in the active field of immuno-oncology research. We are looking forward to initiating this strategic project taking advantage of motivating technical challenges to reach attractive therapeutic outcomes” said Alban Bessede, CEO of Explicyte.