NEW YORK, April 17, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – Cellectis (the “Company”) CLLSa clinical-stage biotechnology company using its breakthrough gene-editing platform to develop life-saving cell and gene therapies, today released preclinical data on TALEN^®-edited MUC1-CAR T cells at the 2023 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting. effective option for treating patients with relapsed and refractory triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) with limited therapeutic options.

The tumor-associated MUC1 antigen is overexpressed in a large number of TNBC patients and provides an effective discriminatory target for CAR-T cell therapy.

Cellectis’ MUC1-CAR T cells are allogeneic and target mucin 1 for TNBC and a variety of epithelial cancers. As other solid tumor targets may be plagued by safety concerns due to extra-tumor expression, MUC1 is of great interest as its expression in normal epithelium is restricted to apical membranes. Furthermore, the high glycosylation of MUC1 in normal tissue is in contrast to Cellectis’ MUC1 CAR, which was designed to recognize hypoglycosylated MUC1 present in cancer cells. Cellectis MUC1 CAR T cells contain up to four TALEN^®-mediated knockouts and two knock-ins.

“We are very pleased to present these encouraging preclinical data at AACR, which demonstrate how different properties (knock-out or knock-in) contribute to the efficacy of our CAR-T cell product candidate,” said Laurent Poirot, Ph.D ., Senior Vice President Immunology at Cellectis. “We are convinced that allogeneic MUC1-CART cells can be an effective option in the treatment of relapsed and refractory triple-negative breast cancer.”

The poster presentation at AACR highlights the following preclinical data:

• Intratumoral administration of antigen-specific CAR-T cells resulted in effective control of tumor growth.
• Results show superior activity…