Local Biotech in Cancer Treatment Study

Sherman Oaks biotech T-Cure Bioscience has announced it entered into a clinical research agreement with Rutgers University in New Jersey to test certain cancer treatments.Through the agreement, T-cell receptor therapy products (where T-Cure got its name) will be tested on gastric, cervical, lung and breast cancer cells, the private company said. These types of cancer therapy products genetically engineer a patient’s T-cells to recognize a specific form of cancer, then inject them back into the body. T-Cure’s therapy product is under an exclusive, worldwide license with the National Cancer Institute as of last year.Dr. Christian Hinrichs, co-director of the Cancer Immunology and Metabolism Center of Excellence at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, will head research efforts. “We look forward to our partnership with Dr. Hinrichs at Rutgers as a continuation of the work we undertook with him and his team at the NCI,” Dr. Gang Zeng, chief executive of T-Cure, said in a statement. “We believe (the therapy) holds great promise for engineering patients’ immune cells to effectively target and destroy cancer cells without being harmful to healthy tissue.”Clinical study responsibilities will be transferred from NCI to Rutgers in the second half of this year.