Cell Mogrify has been awarded US$555,000 (£420,000 GBP) in funding from Innovate UK, through the investment accelerator for innovation in precision medicine.
This funding will support the application of Mogrify’s bioinformatic approach to transition three cell therapy products to the preclinical stage, with potential application in wound healing, and oncology immunotherapy.
Mogrify will utilise its patented systematic big-data approach to identify, from next-generation sequencing and gene-regulatory networks, the sets of highly influential and non-redundant transcription factors (in vitro) or small molecules (in vivo), needed to drive the direct conversion of one mature cell type (e.g. fibroblasts) into another (e.g. T cells).
The reprogrammed cells will then be subjected to a number of functional tests to demonstrate bioequivalence and potential as cell therapies, such as CAR-T for the treatment of cancers.
At present, cells used in cell therapies either need to be extracted and sorted from the patient themselves or a donor, or derived via experimental protocols that can take several years to develop, all of which can delay cell therapies reaching the clinic.
Cambridge-based Mogrify aims to accelerate the process by using its novel bioinformatic platform to deliver an efficient, safe and scalable source of cells for the development of multiple personalised regenerative cell therapy products.
Dr Darrin M Disley, OBE, CEO of Mogrify, said: “By embracing systematic data science approaches built on large-scale transcriptomic, cell regulatory network and epigenetic data we believe better cell therapies can be developed at a lower cost across all therapeutic areas.”
If successful, this funding will increase Mogrify’s potential part in the global cell therapy opportunity, worth an estimated $30 billion.