CELLSIGHT TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase II: 102

Description

Abstract CellSight is a clinical stage company developing PET imaging tools that can increase the probability of clinical success of immunotherapies by determining early in the therapeutic regimen if the cancer patient is responding to their immunotherapyCancer immunotherapies that harness the body s immune system to help fight cancer do not work for everyonein factsuccess rates can be as low asThis means that up toof patients undergoing immunotherapy are spending over $and investingtomonths on ineffective treatmentsOur lead imaging tracerFFAraG product named VisAcTleverages existing health and PET imaging infrastructure but is specific for visualizing immune responseThis whole body visualization will provide clinicians critical information to help make early decisions in the treatment regimen and increase chances of patient survivalCellSight is partnering with pharma and academia on various projects to validate this critically needed immune response monitoring tool as immunotherapies and combinational therapies are showing great promiseThe sheer number of combinations are staggering yet there are no blood biomarkers or imaging tools available that can be predictive of responders versus nonrespondersEven if accurate blood biomarkers were to became available in the near futurewhole body imaging will still be critically needed to determine local immune response site by site in the metastatic patient who are the ones being administered immunotherapiesClinical symptoms during immunotherapy are very perplexingas it might seem a patient is progressing when in fact their immune system is actively fighting the cancer or there might be a delay before immune response is apparent through traditional measuresAn immune response monitoring toolsuch as VisAcTwill be key in enabling success for immunotherapiesVisAcT was first discovered and developed in the Gambhir labChair of Radiology at Stanfordand is exclusively licensed to CellSightCellSight has obtained an IND primarily through funding from the NCIWe are currently conducting Phaseclinical trials at University of California San Francisco for various solid tumors including MelanomaLung and Bladder under DrsDaudGubens and Fong respectively and are about to launch a Head Neck cancer trial at Stanford under DrColevasOur primary target market is the immuno oncology market however since the tracer shows immune response that is specific to activated T cells it can be useful for other immune modulated diseases such as Graft vs Host Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis