Cellectis

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Cellectis
Company typeSociété Anonyme
IndustryBiotechnology, genome engineering, oncology
Founded1999
Headquarters
  • Paris XIIIème (France)
Key people
André Choulika (CEO)
Products
Websitecellectis.com

Cellectis is a French biopharmaceutical company. It develops genome-edited chimeric antigen receptor T-cell technologies for cancer immunotherapy.[1] It has offices in Paris and New York City.

History

Cellectis was founded by André Choulika in 1999.[2] It built up a successful business based on the use of meganucleases in genome engineering. Cellectis went public in 2007, and raised €21.2 million in a stock offering on EuroNext. In 2010 it acquired Cyto Pulse, which had developed a new electroporation technology,[3] and in 2011 it paid €28 million for Cellartis, a Swedish biotechnology company.[2] In January 2011 the company licensed TALEN gene-editing technology from Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota.[4][5]The company employed nearly 300 people in early 2014.[2]

With the advent of the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat) genome editing technique, the Cellectis meganuclease technology became uneconomic, and by 2013 the company was close to bankruptcy. It restructured, closed laboratories and reduced staff, and shifted research emphasis toward CAR-T technologies for cancer immunotherapy. Early in 2014 it reached a substantial financing deal with Servier, and later in the same year made a much larger agreement with Pfizer.[2]

In March 2015 the company raised US$228 million through a stock offering on NASDAQ. The shares fell by 15% in the first week of trading.[6]

Calyxt

Cellectis formed the subsidiary of Calyxt in 2010[7] to develop crops with improved nutritional and agricultural characteristics through gene editing. [8] Based in New Brighton, Minnesota, the subsidiary filed for an IPO in June, 2017.[9] The work Calyxt does differs from genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs. Calyxt uses gene editing techniques such as TALEN to change the genome. In the case of Calyxt soybeans, two genes were turned off to create soybeans with a healthier mix of fatty acids.[10]

CAR-T cancer treatment

Cellectis is developing an “off-the-shelf” biopharmaceutical meant to work for any person who has a specific type of leukemia.[11]

Most CAR-T therapies under development as of 2017 involved taking T-cells from the person with cancer and applying gene therapy to those cells to activate them to attack the person's cancer; an autologous cell therapy approach. Cellectis' approach starts with T-cells taken from healthy donors (allograft) and modifying these base cells with gene editing to disable the gene that causes donor immune cells to attack their host (preventing graft vs host disease). The base cells can then be modified the same way other CAR-T therapeutics are.[12]

UCART123 is in phase 1 trials for blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).[13] In early September 2017, the FDA suspended Cellectis’ Phase I trials of UCART123 in the wake of the death of a BPDCN patient from cytokine release syndrome (CRS).[13] The FDA hold was lifted in November 2017 after reducing the dosage and with additional conditions.[14]

References

  1. ^ Bryce Elder, Arash Massoud, Andrew Ward, David Crow (28 May 2015). Biotech Cellectis in takeover talks with Pfizer. Financial Times. Accessed March 2016. (subscription required).
  2. ^ a b c d Philip Hemme (15 July 2015). "How Servier saved Cellectis, the French CAR-T Miracle". Labiotech.eu. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  3. ^ "Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News - Biotech from Bench to Business". Genengnews.com. 8 November 2013. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016. Retrieved 16 March 2016. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ Marx, V (November 2012). "Genome-editing tools storm ahead". Nature Methods. 9 (11): 1055–9. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2220. PMID 23132115.
  5. ^ "Cellectis Nabs TAL Effector IP from Minnesota and Iowa State Universities". GEN. 20 January 2011.
  6. ^ "US IPO Weekly Recap: SolarEdge shines while other IPOs fall flat". NASDAQ.com. 27 March 2015. Retrieved 18 September 2017.
  7. ^ Rehkamp, Patrick (21 July 2017). "Biotech firm Calyxt goes public, shares climb 30 percent". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 8 October 2017. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  8. ^ "Calyxt's Non-trans Fat Soybean Variety on Target for 2018". Twin Cities Business. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  9. ^ "Agricultural biotechnology company Calyxt files for IPO". Star Tribune. Retrieved 26 October 2017.
  10. ^ Chang, Kenneth (2017). "These Foods Aren't Genetically Modified but They Are 'Edited'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 8 October 2017.
  11. ^ Weintraub, Karen. "Powerful Childhood Cancer Treatment Holds Promise--and Poses Hazards". Scientific American. Retrieved 8 October 2017.
  12. ^ "Gene editing has saved the lives of two children with leukaemia". New Scientist. Retrieved 8 October 2017.
  13. ^ a b McKee, Selina (5 September 2017). "FDA holds trials of Cellectis' cell therapy after patient death". www.pharmatimes.com. Retrieved 8 October 2017.
  14. ^ FDA Lifts Clinical Hold on Cellectis’ UCART123 Phase 1 Trials in AML, BPDCN. nov 2017
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