Dr. Anna Blakney and team receive $8.4 million USD grant for immune cell engineering

Dr. Anna Blakney’s team (Michael Smith Laboratories, School of Biomedical Engineering) has partnered with STRM.BIO and Ginkgo Bioworks on a grant that will allow them to further explore and develop a delivery platform for immune cell engineering.

Awarded through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Engineering of Immune Cells Inside the Body (EMBODY) program, the team received a total of $8.4 million USD to support their work revolutionizing cell therapy manufacturing and delivery methods.

“This high-risk, high-reward ARPA-H investment enables us to bring together novel delivery technologies, scalable manufacturing strategies, and rigorous preclinical validation,” explains Dr. Blakney. “It accelerates our ability to translate in vivo cell engineering from a promising concept into a clinically viable platform.”

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Current cell therapy approaches require extracting immune cells from patients, reprogramming them, and then re-infusing them into patients. This entire process can be difficult and lengthy, which leads to a high cost as well.

The team is instead looking at ways this can be done inside the body, delivering the necessary components for reprogramming immune cells to the cells directly. Their plan is to use a megakaryocyte-derived extracellular vesicle (MV) delivery system developed by STRM.BIO, using cells found in bone marrow to create the necessary delivery ‘vehicles’ for the cell engineering components. Their initial focus will be on using this technology for the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as lupus.

The Blakney lab will concentrate on lending their expertise in self-amplifying RNA to this project, technology that takes advantage of viral replication to lower the dose needed when delivering therapeutics.

“Our ultimate goal is to fully move cell therapy manufacturing into the body itself,” shares Dr. Blakney. “By doing so, we hope to make lifesaving immune therapies dramatically more accessible, affordable, and scalable so they can reach far more patients than is possible today.”

If this project is successful, this technology would become more widely accessible, improving health outcomes for patients with autoimmune diseases and opening the door for a wider range of applications in the future.

Quick links:

• Learn more about project partners STRM.BIO and Ginkgo Bioworks
• Learn more about ARPA-H
• Learn more about the EMBODY program
• Read the press releases from STRM.BIO and Ginkgo Bioworks