2017 shaping up to be pivotal year for CAR-T and CRISPR therapies
2017 is promising to be a pivotal year as CRISPR/Cas9 and CAR-T head toward critical milestones. In the coming months, the first therapy based on CAR-T will likely get regulatory approval, with candidates from Novartis and Kite Pharma that promise to reprogram the immune system to fight cancer currently leading the race.
The first data should also emerge from human trials of CRISPR. In November, a Chinese research group started the first human trials of a CRISPR therapy, injecting genome-edited immune cells into a patient with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Studies in the U.S. are also planned to get underway in 2017. In June, the NIH approved a trial to edit cancer patients’ T cells to better attack cancer cells.
We’ve also recently seen further steps toward combining CAR-T and CRISPR, with deals struck between CRISPR specialists and companies with CAR-T programs, for example: Editas Medicine and Juno Therapeutics, CRISPR Therapeutics and Celgene/GlaxoSmithKline, and Intellia Therapeutics and Novartis.
