Cytospire’s solution to this challenge works through leveraging the natural biology of a specific class of immune cells called gamma delta T cells. Gamma delta T cells are a promising class of cytotoxic cells that act at the nexus of innate and adaptive immunity. This duality allows gamma delta T cells to drive potent anti-cancer activity, while utilising innate receptors to exquisitely discriminate between diseased cancer cells and healthy cells. In addition, gamma delta T cells do not release excessive amounts of inflammatory cytokines such as IL-6 and IFNγ when they kill tumor cells. This means that therapeutics leveraging gamma delta T cells have a low propensity for causing cytokine release syndrome in the clinic. Due to this biology, gamma delta T cell engagers are considered to have great potential as effector cells for next generation T engagers.

To date, most clinical-stage therapies based on gamma delta T cell have leveraged the blood resident subtype of gamma delta T cells called Vδ2 (Vγ9δ2) cells. However, over the past decade, it has become increasingly clear that favourable patient outcomes in a range of solid tumors are driven by tissue/tumor resident Vδ1 and Vδ3 gamma delta T cells, elevating these as essential cells to leverage with novel gamma delta T cell engagers.

Cytospire is advancing the next generation of gamma delta T cell engagers against promising tumor antigens intractable to traditional CD3 engagers. Our unique approach allows us to activate all subtypes of gamma delta T cells, both blood and tumor resident cells. This differentiated technology enables us to stimulate a critical mass of gamma delta T cells and removes the complexity of heterogeneity between patients in gamma delta T cell subtype numbers.