Benzinga | Nov 9, 2021 11:54AM EST

Fate Therapeutics Highlights Abstract On FT538, FT573 Programs Were Selected For Presentation at Society For Immunotherapy Of Cancer Meeting Nov. 10 12:30-2 p.m. EST

Company to Host Virtual Investor Event on Monday, November 15

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:FATE), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of programmed cellular immunotherapies for patients with cancer, today announced that the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Communications Committee selected an abstract featuring preclinical data from the Company's FT538 and FT573 programs for showcase at the SITC 2021 Annual Meeting Press Conference. The selected abstract entitled "Off-the-shelf, engineered iPSC-derived NK cells mediate potent cytotoxic activity against primary glioblastoma cells and promote durable long-term survival in vivo" will be presented by Jeffrey S. Miller, M.D., Professor of Medicine, University of Minnesota and Deputy Director, Masonic Cancer Center. The press conference is being held on Wednesday, November 10 from 12:30-2 pm ET.

Dr. Miller's presentation will describe the anti-tumor activity of the Company's FT538 clinical product candidate as monotherapy and in combination with an NK cell engager targeting B7-H3, an immune checkpoint transmembrane protein overexpressed on many human cancer cells and commonly associated with poor prognosis. The presentation will also describe the integration of a novel chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) construct targeting B7-H3 into the master induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) line of FT538 to create the Company's preclinical product candidate FT573, a B7-H3-targeted CAR NK cell incorporating multiple anti-tumor modalities.

In a recently published peer-reviewed article in Cell Stem Cell entitled "Harnessing features of adaptive NK cells to generate iPSC-derived NK cells for enhanced immunotherapy", FT538 was shown to share metabolic, transcriptional, and functional features with adaptive NK cells, a rare subset of NK cells with memory-like properties that have a genome-wide epigenetic profile and recall response that parallel cytotoxic effector CD8+ T cells. The published data demonstrate that FT538 exhibits significantly enhanced serial killing and functional persistence compared to peripheral blood NK cells. The superior anti-tumor activity of FT538 was attributable to its novel engineered components, including the knockout of CD38 and the expression of IL-15/IL-15R fusion protein, which were shown to improve metabolic fitness, increase resistance to oxidative stress, and induce a protein expression program that enhanced NK cell activation and effector function. The studies in the Cell Stem Cell publication were conducted as part of a collaboration between scientists at Fate Therapeutics and the laboratory of Dr. Miller, and were led by Frank Cichocki, Ph.D., University of Minnesota.

Investor Event Webcast and Conference Call

The Company will host a live audio webcast on Monday, November 15, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. ET to highlight its emerging pipeline of off-the-shelf, multiplexed-engineered, iPSC-derived NK cell programs for the treatment of solid tumors. In order to participate in the conference call, please dial (877) 303-6235 (domestic) or (631) 291-4837 (international) and refer to conference ID 2793475. The live webcast can be accessed under "Events & Presentations" in the Investors section of the Company's website at www.fatetherapeutics.com. The archived webcast will be available on the Company's website beginning approximately two hours after the event.