Company: PGEN
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001356090-25-000007
Chunk: 21

Company: PRECIGEN, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-03-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 21
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 multicistronic transposon DNA and our overnight, decentralized manufacturing process of UltraCAR-T.

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We have introduced our vision for a new UltraCAR-T library approach, which is intended to transform the personalized cell therapy landscape for cancer patients. Our goal is to develop and validate a library of non-viral plasmids to target tumor-associated antigens. Enabled by what we believe to be design and manufacturing advantages of UltraCAR-T, coupled with the capabilities of the UltraPorator system, we are working to empower cancer centers to deliver personalized, autologous UltraCAR-T treatment with overnight manufacturing to any cancer patient. If our goal is realized, one or more non-viral plasmids could be selected based on the patient's cancer indication and biomarker profile from the library to build a personalized UltraCAR-T treatment. After initial treatment, this approach has the potential to allow for redosing of UltraCAR-T targeting the same or new tumor-associated antigens based on the treatment response and the changes in antigen expression of the patient's tumor.

The key advantages of UltraCAR-T versus the traditional CAR-T approaches include:

Advanced non-viral multigenic delivery system

We have optimized and advanced the Sleeping Beauty system using our UltraVector DNA construction platform to produce multigenic UltraCAR-T cells. As a result of this optimization, our UltraCAR-T cells are precision-engineered to produce a homogeneous cell product that simultaneously co-expresses antigen-specific CAR, kill switch, and mbIL15 genes in any genetically modified UltraCAR-T cell. We recently introduced the next generation UltraCAR-T platform that addresses the inhibitory tumor microenvironment by incorporating a novel mechanism for intrinsic downregulation of one or more checkpoint inhibitor, or CPI, genes. This design achieves intrinsic CPI blockade without gene editing and is aimed at avoiding systemic toxicity and the high cost of combining CPI antibodies. The next generation UltraCAR-T cells simultaneously express CAR, mbIL15, and a kill switch, and incorporate intrinsic CPI blockade using a single multicistronic non-viral transposon. This design differentiates our UltraCAR-T platform from the approaches used by our competitors and, we believe, reduces the developmental risk as compared to those approaches because product homogeneity is a critical consideration for later stages of clinical development and subsequent commercialization. We utilize our protein engineering and immunology expertise to 

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optimize antigen binding, hinge, and signaling domains of each CAR based on the target antigen expression profile and cancer indication. We have also included our proprietary kill switch technology in our UltraCAR-T