From CAR-T to CAR-M

The biggest stumbling block for CAR-T cancer therapy is that its benefits, while revolutionary in blood cancer, have yet to extend to solid tumors. The startup Carisma Therapeutics believes it has found a workaround, changing one letter in that acronym by focusing on a different time of immune cell.

As STAT’s Kate Sheridan reports, while CAR-T treatments genetically engineer T cells, Carisma is applying a similar technology to macrophages, the clean-up crews of the body. As Carisma co-founder Michael Klichinsky explained, the company isolated the most aggressive species of macrophages and outfitted cells with molecular homing devices matched to certain solid tumors. In a mouse study, published this week in Nature Biotechnology, the so-called CAR-M therapy had a significant effect on survival.

It’ll be years before anyone can be sure Klichinsky’s method works where CAR-T falters, but Carisma has a plan to get there. The company is on track to start its first clinical trial later this year and has enough money in the bank to see the process through into 2021.

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