Research & Development

Clinical stage biotechnology company PolTREG has launched a study with CAR-Treg cells in a humanised mouse model of neuroinflammatory disease. If preclinical testing is a success, first-in-human trials for multiple sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are expected in 2025.

PolTREG’s CAR-Treg cells are derived from its PTG-007 Treg cells – an advanced autologous polyclonal Treg cell therapy – which has been studied in patients with type 1 diabetes and those with relapseremitting MS.

Professor Piotr Trzonkowski, chief executive officer of PolTREG, stated: “This first preclinical study of our CAR-Treg cell therapy programme to treat neurodegenerative disease is a significant milestone for PolTREG. This may be our first CAR-Treg cell therapy candidate, but we expect it to benefit tremendously from the experience our team has built up during more than a decade in manufacturing, developing and treating patients with PTG-007. This lengthy track record gives us several competitive advantages, as the next-generation engineered Tregs that we are adding to our pipeline come from the same platform, and show a large degree of bioequivalence with PTG-007. Because of our proprietary technology and expertise, we expect to be able to develop our engineered therapies with greater ease than others in this field.”