Selective
Targeting,
Thoughtful
Design

Scientific Overview

Our comprehensive cell therapy platform was designed to generate allogeneic, iPSC-derived NK and T cell products for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases with significant unmet medical need.

EVOLUTION OF CELL THERAPY
IN CANCER

Evolution of
cell therapy
in cancer

Century’s approach builds on the foundation of autologous and allogeneic cell therapy research to transform cell therapy as we know it today.

While autologous CAR-T therapies that create individual treatments from the cells of each patient have demonstrated success in treating certain blood cancers, there remain significant limitations to this approach. These include lengthy delays for treatment initiation due to manufacturing complexities and cost. Furthermore, the cells from which the product is made are often dysfunctional because they come from cancer patients.

Allogeneic CAR-T therapies overcome some of these limitations by using healthy donor cells, but because the cells are foreign to the patient, they can be rejected by the patient’s immune system, or even attack normal cells in the patient. In addition, during manufacturing, these normal donor cells can only expand or “replicate” to a limited degree before becoming dysfunctional, requiring repeat collection of fresh cells from the donors to replenish drug inventory.

iPSCs provide donor cells with unlimited replication capacity, offering the potential for a more streamlined manufacturing process and consistent product. Century’s approach takes advantage of iPSCs engineered with common features, which act as a “platform” for generating an army of cancer-fighting NK and T cell products. This approach eliminates the need to repeat these engineering steps for future programs, saving time, maximizing efficiency, improving quality control, and enabling potentially rapid development of multiple cell products.

Century Approach

We are leveraging our expertise in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), gene editing, protein engineering and manufacturing to develop next generation cell therapies that can be dosed as needed until every patient achieves a durable response.

Learn more about our core competencies

EFFICIENT PRECISION
GENE EDITING TECHNOLOGY

ALLO-EVASION™ TECHNOLOGY

CAR AND PROTEIN
ENGINEERING

COMMON ENGINEERED
IPSC PROGENITORS

STREAMLINED
MANUFACTURING AND COGS

CELL FOUNDRY

EFFICIENT PRECISION GENE EDITING TECHNOLOGY

We are currently using CRISPR-MAD7 mediated homologous directed repair (HDR) to simultaneously knock-out and knock-in (introduce) genes at precise sites in the iPSC genome. This approach preserves genome integrity and achieves more predictable and consistent transgene expression as compared to approaches driven by viruses or transposable segments (transposons), which result in varied gene copy number and random integration events that increase the risk of insertional mutagenesis.

ALLO-EVASION™ TECHNOLOGY

We are leveraging our Allo-Evasion™ technology to design cells capable of evading identification and destruction by the host immune system, which may permit dosing in patients with limited or no immune preconditioning regimens. The technology may also allow repeat dosing of our CAR-modified cell therapies to generate durable responses.

CAR AND PROTEIN ENGINEERING

CAR design is a critical component of innovative cell therapy product candidates. We believe that targeting multiple antigens on tumor cells will help address tumor heterogeneity and antigen loss, which are frequently observed in tumor cells. We have created a proprietary synthetic library to enable in-house binder screens and multiple campaigns against several tumor antigens are ongoing to generate the CAR constructs for future product candidates.

COMMON ENGINEERED IPSC PROGENITORS

The ability to perform multiple gene edits has enabled Century to accelerate new product development through the use of common progenitor cells. These cells are designed to share a core set of features intended to increase their functionality, safety, and persistence. By starting with a common progenitor and limiting the number of additional product-specific edits to be performed, this approach may significantly shorten the time and resources required to develop subsequent product candidates.

STREAMLINED MANUFACTURING AND COGS

Manufacturing starts with a master cell bank (MCB), which has been expanded from a single, genetically-engineered iPSC clone derived from one healthy donor. This MCB can be used over the lifetime of the product – eliminating the need to source multiple donors or repeat cell engineering, removing batch-to-batch variability and leading to a consistent, high-quality product. Additionally, this approach streamlines manufacturing to greatly increase dose capacity, reduce manufacturing costs, and result in a true, off-the-shelf product.

CELL FOUNDRY

Cell Foundry is a proprietary process for iPSC differentiation which recapitulates adult hematopoiesis and T cell development. Our innovative approach produces HPCs capable of “definitive hematopoiesis” which can be directed toward T cell lineage commitment through a CD4+CD8+ (“double positive”) intermediate using stage-specific regulation. Controlled delivery of signals necessary for recapitulating thymic positive selection further differentiates these “double positive” cells into single positive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Precisely titrated activation signals promote final T cell maturation and expansion into fully functional immune effector cells capable of cytolysis, IL2 production, and clonal expansion following CAR engagement. Together, these attributes enable scalable maturation and expansion of iPSC cells into the appropriate cell type for a given therapeutic application.

Scientific Resources

Posters Presentations Publications

Selective Targeting, Thoughtful Design

Scientific Overview

Evolution of cell therapy in cancer

Century Approach

EFFICIENT PRECISION GENE EDITING TECHNOLOGY

ALLO-EVASION™ TECHNOLOGY

CAR AND PROTEIN ENGINEERING

COMMON ENGINEERED IPSC PROGENITORS

STREAMLINED MANUFACTURING AND COGS

CELL FOUNDRY

Scientific Resources

Selective
Targeting,
Thoughtful
Design

Evolution of
cell therapy
in cancer