Kyverna license deal with NIH for anti-CD19 CAR T therapies

US autoimmune drug developer Kyverna Therapeutics has entered into exclusive, worldwide licenses with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for intellectual property related to a novel clinical-stage anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) construct with properties uniquely suited for use in autoimmune diseases.

Kyverna has obtained rights to use the construct in both autologous and allogeneic CAR T-cell therapies.

This next-generation CAR T construct was designed to improve the tolerability profile of conventional CD19 CAR Ts and developed in the laboratory of Dr James Kochenderfer, at the National Cancer Institute, part of the NIH, the same laboratory that discovered axicabtagene ciloleucel. The rational design was geared to minimize cytokine release and improve clinical tolerability, yielding a construct that combines a fully human anti-CD19 CAR with rationally assembled costimulatory domains.