Yufan Biotechnologies and Abound Bio Sign Multi-Year Agreement to Develop Next Generation CAR T-cell Therapies for Cancer

Exhaustion of T-cells is a key reason why CAR T-cell therapy may fail to control cancer.  Recent work led by Xuebin Liao, PhD, Professor of Pharmaceutical Science at Tsinghua University (Si et al., Cancer Cell 2020) shows that HPK1 (hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1) promotes T cell exhaustion via NFkB-Blimp1 activation and that blocking HPK1, either by gene knockout or by small-molecule inhibitors, is an attractive strategy to improve CAR T-cell immunotherapy. These innovative approaches are being evaluated clinically by Yufan Biotechnologies, co-founded by Professor Liao and Yan Zhang, CEO. Yufan Biotechnologies has now partnered with Abound Bio, Inc, a life sciences company with world-renowned expertise in finding antibodies to direct CAR T-cells against cancer targets. Abound Bio was co-founded by Dimiter Dimitrov, PhD, and John Mellors, MD, CEO. The three-year partnership covers the incorporation of antibodies to novel cancer targets into the enhanced, HPK1-inhibited CAR T-cell platform.