NexImmune, an immunotherapy company developing products for the treatment of cancer, today announced a new scientific publication by NexImmune co-founder Dr. Jonathan Schneck and colleagues that provides an important advance in the use of its proprietary Artificial Immune (AIMä) Technology for cellular therapy of cancer. The study, published this week in ACS Nano, demonstrated the use of nanoparticle artificial Antigen Presenting Cells (aAPC), a key component of the AIM technology, with applied magnetic fields to activate and expand naive, normally poorly responsive T cell populations. Significantly, activated cells were highly effective for treating cancer in a mouse model system.
Activating naive T cells has been a key, but elusive goal of immunotherapy as these cells are more effective than differentiated T cell subtypes for treating cancer. Once activated, naive T cells have a higher proliferative capacity and a greater ability to generate strong, long-term T cell responses important for immunotherapy. Thus, this study describes a novel approach whereby AIM aAPC can potentially be coupled to magnetic-field-enhanced activation of T cells to increase the yield and activity of antigen-specific T cells expanded from naive precursors, thereby improving cellular therapy for cancer.