Mogrify and Sangamo Collaborate on Cell Therapies

Rare Daily Staff

U.K. cell therapy developer Mogrify and genomic medicine developer Sangamo Therapeutics said they have entered a collaboration and exclusive license agreement that will enable Sangamo to develop off-the-shelf cell therapies.

Sangamo will use Mogrify’s cell conversion technology in combination with its zinc finger protein [ZFP] gene-engineered chimeric antigen receptor regulatory T cell technology to develop allogeneic CAR-Treg cell therapies.

“We expect this collaboration to accelerate our development of scalable and accessible CAR-Treg cell therapies, so that we can potentially deliver treatments to patients with inflammatory and autoimmune diseases more rapidly,” said Jason Fontenot, senior vice president and head of cell therapy at Sangamo.

Mogrify’s technology enables the transformation of any human cell type into any other human cell type. This transformation is achieved using transcription factors or small molecules identified using proprietary big data technologies. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) and embryonic stem cells (ESCs) provide an evergreen starting material for the generation of Tregs, and facilitate more complex engineering and greater manufacturing scalability, potentially enabling the resulting therapies to be more cost-effective and therefore more accessible to larger patient populations.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mogrify will be responsible for the discovery and optimization of the cell conversion technology from iPSCs or ESCs to regulatory T cells, and Sangamo will be granted exclusive rights to use Mogrify’s technology to create Tregs from iPSCs or ESCs. Sangamo expects to then use its zinc finger protein gene-engineering technology and therapeutic development capabilities to transform these Tregs into novel “off-the-shelf” allogeneic CAR-Treg cell therapy candidates and hopes to take them from clinical development through to registration for the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Sangamo will pay Mogrify an upfront payment. Mogrify is also eligible to receive potential additional payments related to development and regulatory milestones, and product sales.

“The combination of Mogrify’s proprietary systematic cell conversion technology and Sangamo’s regulatory T cell platform and proprietary ZFP platform is a natural fit,” said Darrin Disley, CEO of Mogrify.

Photo: Jason Fontenot, senior vice president and head of cell therapy at Sangamo