Peter Mac's Cell Therapies powers ASX cancer plays
It is home to Australia's only biomedical facility capable of manufacturing CAR T-cells and other cell therapies at commercial scale – operated by Cell Therapies
Several ASX companies have partnered with Cell Therapies as they work to develop their promising cancer therapeutics
Melbourne's Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre – aka Peter Mac – is Australia's only public hospital dedicated to cancer care, research and education.
Peter Mac has Australia's most extensive cancer research site in Australia, with more than 700 laboratory and clinical researchers, nurses, and support staff.
Since its humble beginnings in 1949, the centre has been at the forefront of innovation in cancer diagnostics and treatment.
It is a global leader in nuclear medicine and an early adopter of positron emission tomography (PET) imaging for cancer diagnosis.
This year, the centre plans to evaluate GE HealthCare's next-generation total-body PET/CT scanner, designed to improve cancer detection, staging, and treatment planning.
In partnership with the University of Melbourne, Peter Mac recently established the Collaborative Centre for Genomic Cancer Medicine.
The Wilson Centre for Blood Cancer Genomics and Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics are also located at Peter Mac.
The cancer centre actively partners in clinical trials with pharmaceutical companies of all sizes – from global giants to smaller players – giving patients access to cutting-edge treatments.
And crucially Australia's largest TGA licensed cell and gene therapy contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), Cell Therapies Pty Ltd, is co-located within Peter Mac.
Cell Therapies' sovereign advanced manufacturing facility and highly-skilled workforce support clinical trial and commercial supply of innovative cell-based therapies such as Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
It was the commercial manufacturing partner for Novartis' Kymriah – the first CAR T-cell therapy approved by the US FDA back in 2017.
"Our state-of-the-art clean rooms and production and testing facilities in Melbourne rank among the best in the world and paired with a highly specialised workforce, play a crucial role in enabling our Australian partners to advance the development of cutting-edge cell and gene therapies," Cell Therapies CEO Dr Bev Menner told Stockhead.
Cell Therapies is integral to the success of several Australian companies focusing on CAR T-cell therapies and other cell-based therapies, which are showing promise in the treatment of cancers and other life-threatening conditions.
AdAlta advances Cell Therapies with help from pioneer
AdAlta (ASX:1AD) and venture capital firm SYNthesis BioVentures Fund (SYNBV) launched AdCella in 2024, with an East to West strategy to bring cellular immunotherapies from Asia, particularly China, into Western markets.
AdAlta managing director Dr Tim Oldham was also CEO of Cell Therapies from 2013 to 2017 and said Peter Mac's capabilities were critical to the success of AdCella's East to West strategy.
"Peter Mac's long history and capability in the delivery of CAR T-cell therapy is pivotal to our ability to attract innovation from Asia and further develop those technologies in Australia," Oldham told Stockhead.
"Without those capabilities Peter Mac has developed we wouldn't be able to execute our East to West cell therapy strategy."
Oldham said many globally leading cancer hospitals realised that to be at the forefront of new technologies such as CAR T-cell therapies they needed to be able to manufacture them onsite.
"In Peter Mac's case they make their world-class cell therapies manufacturing capabilities available to not just their own researchers but other companies on a contract basis," he said.
Cell Therapies manufactures Arovella's lead asset for clinical trial
Arovella Therapeutics (ASX:ALA) also uses Cell Therapies as its CDMO to manufacture its lead therapeutic candidate ALA-101 as it prepares for a phase I clinical trial program.
Arovella's proprietary allogeneic (one to many) platform uses healthy donor-derived invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT) cells, engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to target specific cancer antigens.
ALA-101 combines iNKT cells with a CAR that targets CD19, a protein commonly found on B-cell blood cancers like lymphoma and leukaemia.
Arovella has licensed the manufacturing process, which is patent protected, from Imperial College London.
"Arovella's worked with Cell Therapies for quite some time and over that journey we've developed an excellent working relationship and are highly impressed with the breadth and manufacturing work they can undertake," CEO Dr Michael Baker told Stockhead.
Arovella is currently completing manufacturing of clinical batches of ALA-101 with Cell Therapies in preparation for first-in-human studies and aims to file an investigational new drug (IND) application with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This will enable the company to start is phase I trial for ALA-101 in CD19-positive blood cancer patients in CY25. Arovella also plans to present proof-of-concept data for its CLDN18.2-CAR-iNKT cell gastric cancer program in coming months.
"Arovella is excited to take ALA-101 into clinical trials and the partnership between Arovella and Cell Therapies has been critical to make that happen," Baker said.
"As we embark on our strategy to expand our pipeline with new programs targeting solid tumours, we look forward to strengthening our partnership with Cell Therapies."
Chimeric looks to manufacture and bring trials to Peter Mac
Clinical stage cell therapy company Chimeric Therapeutics (ASX:CHM) is also partnering with Cell Therapies to explore the potential to manufacture its CAR-T assets in Australia.
Chimeric CEO Dr Rebecca McQualter told Stockhead that while the company is listed on the ASX, its operations have been US-based.
"That is great for active trials running in the US but because we're an ASX company and focused on local shareholders we're focused on bringing our technology home," she said.
Chimeric has three CAR T & NK cell assets all in clinical trials, two of which it would like to bring to Australia, funding permitted.
It has an ongoing phase 1/2 clinical trial for its novel CHM CDH17 CAR T-cell therapy targeting advanced colorectal cancer.
"Unfortunately, the rate at which people are being diagnosed with bowel cancer from 20 to 30 years old is significantly increasing so we'd like to bring a site to Australia so we're working to be able to do that with Cell Therapies," McQualter said.
Their second program CLTX CAR T is in a phase 1B clinical trial in recurrent/progressive glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer.
"Peter Mac has an amazing brain tumour CAR T program so because we have a site running in Austin, Texas they also want to open a site and that means manufacturing with Cell Therapies," McQualter said.
"We can do everything end-to-end at Peter Mac and don't have to go anywhere else but we're still in the phase of funding our amazing ideas."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Australian
an hour ago
- The Australian
StockTake: Redcastle Resources
Stockhead's Tylah Tully looks at the latest news from Redcastle Resources (ASX:RC1), who is fast tracking a pre-feasibility study at the Queen Alexandra gold project in Leonora. Redcastle released a scoping study released earlier this month which detailed the project as high-return, staged, open-pit concept. Watch the video to learn more. This video was developed in collaboration with Redcastle Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing. This video does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Australia and Vanuatu agree to $500m deal, but details remain scarce
Senior ministers from Australia and Vanuatu have trooped to the top of an active volcano on the island of Tanna for a ceremony to celebrate a major new pact between the two countries. Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Pacific Minister Pat Conroy joined their counterparts from Vanuatu on the top of Mount Yasur to "initial" the landmark Nakamal Agreement ahead of formal signature by prime ministers next month. Australia is set to funnel some $500 million into Vanuatu over a decade under the pact, which will supplant a bilateral security agreement that was effectively scrapped by the Pacific nation after it was signed in 2022. While most of the details in the agreement are not yet public, Australia has labelled it "transformational", and Mr Marles said it reflected the two nations had a "shared destiny". "What this agreement really does is, for the first time, acknowledge what has always been the truth, and that is that as two nations, we are family, and that our future is very much bound together," Mr Marles said. The Prime Minister of Vanuatu Jotham Napat declared the deal a "win-win" for both countries. "The agreement that has entered today will transpire into a lot of great benefits between the two countries, whether it be the security agreement, economic transformation, with some specific focus on the mobile labour mobility and financial support," Mr Napat told journalists in Tanna. Under the agreement, Australia is expected to funnel funding into a host of areas, including climate resilience, key infrastructure, security support, labour mobility and budget support. There were some last-minute negotiations to secure an in-principle agreement ahead of the ministers' arrival, with officials from Vanuatu telling the ABC that both sides had to make some late concessions in order to secure the pact. Mr Marles would not be drawn on exactly what financial commitments Australia had made, but said the Nakamal Agreement "acknowledges our shared economic connection". He added it "makes clear that it is core business for Australia to be engaged in the human development of Vanuatu". It is also not clear if the arrangement will make it easier for Ni-Vanuatu to travel to Australia. Ahead of the agreement, Mr Napat declared he would not sign unless Australia agreed to introduce "visa-free" travel for his country's citizens, an arrangement which Australia has never introduced for any Pacific island nations. When asked whether Australia had offered any concessions on this front, Mr Napat said there would be an "agenda item" on visa-free travel in the Nakamal Agreement, but also suggested the subject was still being discussed — saying Australia "would get back to us on that". While Australia has not outlined its position publicly, the ABC has been told that while a "visa free" arrangement was not on the table, the government was willing to discuss liberalising broader travel requirements for citizens of Vanuatu. Griffith Asia Institute Adjunct Associate Professor Tess Newton Cain said the question around travel was a "real issue for the Vanuatu government and for the prime minister personally". "He has said that this is a 'must have' as far as he is concerned and he knows that if it doesn't transpire, it will reflect badly on him," Dr Cain told the ABC. She also said other Pacific nations would be watching the discussions between Vanuatu and Australia closely. "If, and it's a big if, Australia does grant some degree of visa-free access, for example, for Vanuatu officials, it will be very significant because we would expect to see pressure from other Pacific island countries for the same," she said. The agreement comes as Australia pushes back against China's efforts to embed itself as a major commercial and security partner for Vanuatu. Vanuatu has leaned heavily on Chinese institutions to fund major infrastructure projects and Beijing recently gifted it a sprawling new presidential palace, which was estimated to cost $31 million. China's police training teams have also been playing an increasingly visible role in the Pacific island nation. Vanuatu is not expected to hand Australia any "veto" rights over security partnerships with outside countries under the Nakamal Agreement, as both Nauru and Tuvalu have done in their strategic pacts with Canberra. But federal government officials nonetheless hope the substantial commitments on security within the pact will help enshrine Australia's position as Vanuatu's top security partner. Dr Cain suggested the Nakamal Agreement would likely have greater staying power than the 2022 bilateral security agreement signed by former Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau, which first stalled in parliament before being effectively dumped by Mr Napat. "The process is the main difference — this has been signed off by both the National Security Council and the Council of Ministers, which did not happen in 2022," she said. "It also is being designated as much broader than simply a security agreement with commitments made across several domains, including climate resilience, economic development and budget support."
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
ASX slumps as CBA financial results disappoint investors
Australia's sharemarket slumped on Wednesday as investors sold off CBA, Computershare and AGL shares on disappointing financial results. The benchmark ASX 200 dropped 53.70 points, or 0.60 per cent, to 88271.0 while the broader All Ordinaries lost 47.20 points, or 0.52 per cent, to 9103.10. Australia's dollar is trading 0.23 per cent higher, buying 65.44 US cents. Overall, six of the 11 sectors gained, but falls in the utilities and financials offset gains out of materials, healthcare and consumer staples. The drag on the market was led by CBA, with the heavyweight pulling down the entire market, due to being almost 12 per cent of the index. Shares in Australia's largest company plunged 5.41 per cent to $169.12 on its latest profit announcement. The fall comes despite Australia's largest bank saying improving household budgets helped drive it to a monster $10.25bn profit. CBA will also pay out a final dividend of $2.60 per share, taking total dividend payouts for the year to $4.85, which is a new record high for the bank. Despite announcing strong profits, the bank, which has seen its share price climb 30 per cent over the year, was priced for perfection, with analysts saying the result did not match the valuation. IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said CBA was being dumped due to its lofty valuations. 'The falls come as the market continues to question its lofty valuation and as the RBA's rate-cutting cycle reduces the ability of the bank to leverage its large deposit base and as margins are compressed,' he said in a market note. CBA dragged the rest of the financial sector down. NAB shares fell 2.63 per cent to $38.16, Westpac dropped 2.11 per cent to $33.90 and ANZ slipped 0.19 per cent to $31.87. While the banks sold off, the major miners and healthcare shares gained. The miners were boosted by rising iron ore futures prices on the back of China steel production curbs in the north, adding to tightening global supply. BHP gained 1.14 per cent to $41.73, Rio Tinto added 0.96 per cent to $117.84 and Fortescue jumped 1.37 per cent to $19.93. Healthcare heavyweight CSL gained 1.98 per cent to $269.55, while Cochlear was up 0.43 per cent to $313.29 and Ramsay Healthcare added 0.60 per cent to $38.81 on a strong day for the sector. In other company news, Australia's largest winemaker, Treasury Wine Estates, told the market it was lifting its dividends as well as buying $200m worth of stock as part of its latest company announcement. The business said revenue grew by 6.5 per cent to $2.99bn for the 12 months until June 30, while net profit after tax soared 342 per cent to $437m due to one-off items that dragged down last year's performance being removed. Shares rose 1.18 per cent to $7.72. Computershares fell 3.78 to $39.75 after announcing revenue dropped 5.6 per cent to $3.1bn for the year to June 30. Profits rose 72 per cent to $607m. AGL shares plunged 13.11 per cent to $8.88 after the power generation company said there would be a steeper-than-expected 21.2 per cent drop in profits to $640m.
