CARGO Therapeutics’ mission is to outsmart cancer by developing the next generation of transformational CAR T-cell therapies to impact patients worldwide. Our goal is to become a fully integrated, leading cell therapy.
Despite the curative potential of cell therapies, we believe these treatments are not readily available to many of the patients who could benefit from them due to manufacturing challenges, supply constraints, unpredictable turnaround time and other logistical challenges.
The number of cancers with effective CAR T-cell therapies is limited and the total number of patients who have received these therapies represents only a small fraction of potentially eligible cancer patients. Currently, over 40,000 U.S. patients diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) may be eligible to be treated by CD19 CAR T-cell therapies, but fewer than 3,800 patients are expected to receive such treatment in 2023. Furthermore, resistance mechanisms in hematologic malignancies can limit the strength and quality of T-cell response and contribute to disease progression, including loss or down-regulation of target antigen expression, loss of costimulation and limited CAR T-cell persistence. CARGO’s programs, platform technologies, and manufacturing strategy are designed to directly address the limitations of approved cell therapies, including limited durability of effect, safety concerns and unreliable supply. Our solution involves engineering CAR T-cells with genetic “cargo” designed to enhance the ability to recognize and kill cancer cells in a patient’s body.
Our lead program, CRG-023, is a novel tri-specific CAR T-cell therapy that leverages our capabilities to engineer complex transgene cargo onto a single vector. CRG-023 was designed to address several known causes of relapse (e.g., antigen escape, loss of costimulation, and lack of T-cell persistence), resulting in a potential best-in-class CAR T-cell therapy across a broad range of B-cell malignancies with the goal of providing more patients with a durable complete response.
In order to address the key challenges of existing cell therapy which includes efficacy and durability, quality of T cells, and broad availability for patients, we developed a novel allogeneic platform that is a universal vector solution designed to limit immune-based rejection and enable durable response of CAR T-cell therapy. The allogeneic CAR T platform is comprised of a universal vector with multiple transgene “cargo” to limit T and NK rejection and downregulate TCR. Importantly, the universal, allogeneic-enabling vector is intended to pair with new or clinically established CAR vectors, while leveraging existing autologous drug product processes. Our goal is to develop a universal approach to creating off-the-shelf allogeneic CAR T products to provide more life-saving therapies for patients.
CARGO’s management and team have significant experience in designing, developing and delivering oncology and cell therapy products.
