Ardigen and DKFZ research groups are entering into a collaboration to evaluate the safety of TCR-based therapies (TCR-Ts)

Ardigen, a global leader in artificial intelligence & bioinformatics for precision medicine, announces its collaboration with the DKFZ research groups, led by Prof. Michael Platten/ Dr. Edward Green, regarding safety assessments of TCR based therapies (TCR-Ts).

As a part of this collaboration, Ardigen’s team performed deep in silico screening of potential cross-reactive epitopes for a candidate TCR with their proprietary ArdImmune Tox platform. Ardigen’s platform identified a number of potential off-target epitopes to be validated empirically. These peptides were verified in vitro, resulting in the identification of an off-target epitope that weakly activated the candidate TCR.

“While the antitumor potency of TCR-Ts is evident, a number of TCR-Ts trials using generic TCRs, such as those against the MART or MAGE-A3 antigens, showed significant toxicity, which in extreme cases, led to patient death. I strongly believe that TCR-T’s toxicity must be extensively evaluated prior to conducting any clinical trial. I am proud that Ardigen’s proprietary AI-powered method could be used in evaluating our partner’s pipeline to ensure that patients who are extremely ill will receive the most effective and safest therapy possible.” Dr. Med. Agnieszka Blum, Executive Vice President at Ardigen.

“I am excited to continue our very productive collaboration with Ardigen, which clearly demonstrates the ability of computational biology to increase our understanding of potential off-target toxicity. Proper evaluation of potential safety risks is indispensable while planning any clinical trial. We are excited that our upcoming TCR-based first in man trial underwent such meticulous evaluation to ensure patients’ safety.” Prof. Michael Platten, Head of Department of Brain Tumor Immunology at DKFZ.

About Prof. Platten/ Dr. Edward Green Research Groups at DKFZ

The department of Neuroimmunology and Brain Tumor Immunology at DKFZ is a clinical cooperation unit of the Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, and the German Cancer Research Center. Under the leadership of Prof. Platten the research groups focus on developing innovative new immunotherapeutics for glioma patients. DKFZ research involves using animal models and patient material from own clinical trials to understand and utilize the human immune system within the CNS in order to create new immunotherapies for brain tumors. The ultimate goal is to establish a cycle of target discovery and treatment development that can be quickly translated into clinical studies and back to bench in a reverse translation model.

About Ardigen

Ardigen enables AI transformation for biotech and pharmaceutical companies to leverage the full potential of data. The company delivers value at the intersection of biology and computational methods to increase the likelihood of success and accelerate the drug discovery process.  With our platforms based on advanced algorithms and state-of-the-art technology, we help researchers to get scientific insights from a large amount of data, leading to new discoveries and breakthroughs in fields such as drug development and personalized medicine.

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