Prof. Dr. Angela Krackhardt from the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technische Universität München to lead the project.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 29, 2014 – Kiadis Pharma B.V., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing treatments for blood cancers, today announces that it has initiated a collaboration to identify and characterize leukemia-specific T-cells in Kiadis Pharma’s lead product ATIRTM, that would be responsible for the Graft-versus-Leukemia effect of the T-cell immunotherapy product. The collaboration will be run with Prof. Dr. Angela Krackhardt who leads the group of Translational Immunotherapy at the Department of Hematology (Prof. Christian Peschel) of the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technische Universität München.
The project, which has now commenced, was accepted by the Munich Biotech Cluster m4 and receives grant financing from the Cluster for Prof. Krackhardt’s group. In the Munich Biotech Cluster, biotechnology companies and academic groups work together under the guiding concept of Personalised Medicine on about thirty research projects, in which new drugs and technologies are developed.
ATIRTM is a T-cell based medicinal product that is currently in international multi-centre Phase II clinical trials as an adjunctive treatment after a T-cell depleted haploidentical stem cell transplantation for patients for whom a matching donor cannot be found (in time). ATIRTM is manufactured from lymphocytes collected from the same donor that provides the graft for the stem cell transplantation of the patient. ATIRTM is therefore a truly
personalized immunotherapy.
Manfred Ruediger, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Kiadis Pharma, commented: “We are delighted about our collaboration with the group of Prof. Krackhardt and being part of the Munich m4 Cluster family. We are confident that this will expedite the identification of those T-cells in our lead product candidate, ATIR™, that are responsible for the Graft-versus-Leukemia effect of the product. The Cluster’s expertise in immunotherapies and the translational work of the University Clinic provide the optimal basis for the success of this
collaboration.”
Prof. Angela Krackhardt stated: “We are pleased about the joint project with Kiadis Pharma. ATIR™ provides us with the perfect platform to identify (new) Graft-versus-Leukemia T-cells. The proficiency of Kiadis Pharma and our own well established expertise will result in a unique synergy.”
