Company: PGEN
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001356090-25-000007
Chunk: 22

Company: PRECIGEN, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 22
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 cells to improve the safety profile.

Enhanced persistence and elimination of ex vivo expansion step due to expression of mbIL15

A key driver of improved UltraCAR-T cell performance is mbIL15. The expression of mbIL15 has been shown to enhance in vivo expansion of UltraCAR-T cells in the presence of tumor antigens and prevent T-cell exhaustion to maintain a less differentiated, stem-cell like memory phenotype leading to longer persistence of UltraCAR-T cells. This yields an enduring anti-tumor response that has been shown to outlast conventional CAR-T cells in preclinical studies, which we believe is essential to successfully targeting solid tumors. This design allows us to eliminate the need for ex vivo expansion prior to administration, a requirement that is a major limitation of current CAR-T treatments. 

Scalable, rapid, decentralized manufacturing process

Another key differentiator of the UltraCAR-T therapeutic platform is our rapid and decentralized proprietary manufacturing process, which allows us to manufacture UltraCAR-T cells overnight at a medical center's current good manufacturing practices, or cGMP, facility and reinfuse the patient the following day after gene transfer. This process improves upon current approaches to CAR-T manufacturing, which require extensive ex vivo expansion following viral vector transduction that we believe can result in the exhaustion of CAR-T cells prior to their administration, limiting their potential for persistence in patients. The decentralized nature of the manufacturing process allows us to scale beyond the confines of a dedicated facility. We believe we are the first company to validate non-viral, rapid, decentralized manufacturing of CAR-T cells in the clinic by infusing patients one day after gene transfer at two different sites in our ongoing clinical trials. We believe UltraCAR-T is the only autologous CAR-T platform with manufacturing, quality control release and infusion back to the patient, occurring in one day.

We have developed a proprietary electroporation device, UltraPorator, designed to further streamline and ensure the rapid and cost-effective manufacturing of UltraCAR-T therapies. The UltraPorator system, intended to be a viable scale-up and commercialization solution for decentralized UltraCAR-T manufacturing, includes proprietary hardware and software solutions and potentially represents major advancements over current electroporation devices by significantly reducing processing time and contamination risk. The FDA has cleared UltraPorator as a manufacturing device for clinical trials of our UltraCAR-T investigational therapies.

We believe our UltraCAR-T manufacturing process will provide a significant potential competitive advantage in the timeline and cost required to manufacture and deliver CAR-T therapies to patients as compared to current treatment approaches that require large,