SINGAPORE — CytoMed Therapeutics Limited (NASDAQ: GDTC) (“CytoMed” or “Company”), a Singapore-based biopharmaceutical company focused on harnessing its proprietary technologies to develop novel donor-derived cell-based allogeneic immunotherapies for the treatment of various cancers, today announced that its exclusively licensed induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-based technology has been granted a patent by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA).
“We’re thrilled to strengthen our existing suite of patents,” said Peter Choo, Chairman of CytoMed. “Now this novel iPSC-based technology has been granted patent in China and Japan (where the iPSC technology was pioneered in 2006). Such progress further expands the Company’s current patent portfolio to three countries, consisting of and including patents granted in the US and China for our licensed allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor gamma delta T cell (CAR-γδ T cell) technology which is expected to start phase I clinical trial in Singapore soon.”
For cancer treatment, immune cells such as γδ T cells and natural killer (NK) cells are invaluable therapeutic cells due to their ability to express an array of built-in receptors that recognize stress-induced cancer antigens naturally.
By combining the iPSC technology and directed differentiation, CytoMed can generate a novel type of synthetic hybrid immune cells, γδ NKT cells, that express cancer recognition receptors of both γδ T cells and NK cells to recognize a wide range of cancers without genetic modification or use of viral vectors. As an allogeneic cell source, the Company’s iPSC-derived γδ NKT cells may potentially become an “off-the-shelf” cell therapy that is applicable to a large pool of patients.
The patent titled “Methods and Kits for Generating Mimetic Innate Immune Cells from Pluripotent Stem Cells” with Patent No. ZL201880022790.X, published as CN 110691844 B, covers technologies to derive novel synthetic γδ NKT cells for the treatment of various types of cancers including hematological malignancies and solid tumors. This asset is currently under preclinical development. The Company holds an exclusive, worldwide license to use this patent pursuant to the Licence Agreement dated June 1, 2018, which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an exhibit to the registration statement on Form F-1 (File No.: 333-268456) on March 30, 2023.
About CytoMed Therapeutics Limited (CytoMed)
Incorporated in 2018, CytoMed was spun off from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s leading research and development agency in the public sector. It is a biopharmaceutical company focused on harnessing its licensed proprietary technologies to create novel cell-based immunotherapies for the treatment of human cancers. The development of novel technologies has been inspired by the clinical success of existing CAR-T therapies in treating hematological malignancies, as well as the current clinical limitations and commercial challenges in extrapolating the CAR-T principle into treatment of solid tumors.
To learn more about the market for iPSCs, view the “Global Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPS Cell) Industry Report – Market Size, Trends, and Forecasts 2023.”
