A patient trial for cancer immunotherapy recently utilized Synecta, a platform created by a Philadelphia biotech startup founded by Perelman School of Medicine professors Carl June and James Riley.
The startup — BlueWhale Bio, which was founded in September 2023 — was created to advance and improve cell therapy production and raised $18 million in seed financing. The Synecta platform serves as a cell-derived nanoparticle that mimics “the physiological activation of immune cells,” according to BlueWhale Bio’s website.
Penn sponsored the clinical trial, which aimed to test the safety and feasibility of huCART19-IL18 cells — a type of fourth-generation, “armored” CAR T-cell therapy — in treating patients with CD19+ cancers that either came back after treatment or didn’t get better with treatment.
Elevated CD19+ is seen in B-cell lymphomas and in autoimmune diseases. Since CD19 is a marker of B cells, the protein has been used to diagnose cancers.
The trial used “BlueWhale Bio’s first-in-line product from the company’s Synecta platform to streamline the manufacturing process for huCART19-IL18 cells in the treatment of hematologic cancers.”
In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Riley explained that Synecta activates T-cells, which are immune cells that play an important role in killing viruses and cancer.
“Part of what’s been done at Penn [is that] we’ve played a role in developing something called a CAR-[chimeric antigen receptor]-T cell,” Riley said. “It gives directions on what the T-cells should be trying to kill."
BlueWhale Bio, according to Riley, has been able to manufacture CAR T-cells in “a much more straightforward manner” than what has been currently done in the field.
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“To make these CAR T-cells, you need a way to manufacture them,” Riley said. “And that’s where BlueWhale comes in.”
Peter Keller, the CEO of BlueWhale Bio, told the DP that Synecta could allow patients with “exhausted” cells, typically ineligible for CAR T-cell therapy, to generate them successfully.
“We need to show the world that this is not a one-off, that they can, in their own hands, replicate those results,” Keller said.
Keller added that the company plans to build a sales and marketing team and provide the materials for research use before seeking clinical distribution in 2026. His team hopes to get the ”product out for more and more customers in the academic world and in the biopharma world,“ with the goal of allowing others to use, replicate, and adopt the process.
“Because every cell therapy manufacturing process is a little different, people have to really try it in their own hands and see for themselves how it could integrate in their processes,” Keller said.
