GC Therapeutics: A New Era for Plug-and-Play Cell Therapies
Cell therapies have shown remarkable effectiveness in treating a range of blood disorders and blood-related cancers, offering outsized returns to investors, and importantly new hope for patients by targeting the disease at its source. However, cell therapies have been restricted to a limited number of indications to date, greatly reducing their potential to treat beyond the confines of blood.
Three fundamental bottlenecks limit the potential of expanding cell therapies beyond blood disorders: 1) understanding of stem cell biology for programming tissue-specific cells and 2) the ability to scale the process to meet patient demand and 3) the delivery to various tissues and organs
Today, we’ve reached an inflection point where forward-thinking scientists are addressing these challenges and exploring novel ways to expand the use of cell therapies beyond these traditional applications to target opportunities in longevity medicine and age-related diseases. We are excited to announce the launch of GC Therapeutics–a company founded to take cell therapies into a new era with a plug-and-play programming approach.
The “plug-and-play” approach to cell therapy programming
Stem cell biology and cell-fate programming is a slow, complex process, difficult for scientists to reproduce at scale for the creation of life-saving cell therapies. GC Therapeutics aims to overcome these hurdles with the world’s first “plug-and-play” induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) programming platform, TFome™. Through this innovative work, replicating these human mechanisms faster and more efficiently is slowly becoming a reality and setting a precedent in medicine. By combining synthetic biology, gene editing, cell engineering and machine learning, TFome promises to simplify the complexities of cell engineering and manufacturing in a single-step process.
The company has generated the first complete collection of human transcription factors which control the fate of stem cells. Leveraging this collection, TFome can determine the perfect combinations of transcription factors (or unique cell-differentiation recipes) to transform iPSCs into almost any functional cell type. The entire single-step process can be completed in four days, a truly remarkable feat that will streamline the drug discovery and development paradigm.
With the launch of GC Therapeutics, cell therapies now have the potential to branch out beyond blood conditions, expanding into hepatology, neurology and immunology.
Supporting mission-driven founders
The breakthrough science pioneered by GC Therapeutics can benefit the broader life sciences industry and by streamlining a traditionally complex and time-intensive process, GC Therapeutics is poised to make a transformative impact across multiple therapeutic areas. We’re excited to support their mission to bring innovative, accessible treatments to patients worldwide.
At Mubadala Capital Ventures, our mission is to back forward-thinking companies that challenge the status quo and are unafraid to confront the toughest challenges in science and medicine. We are committed to driving innovation by investing in visionary founders and businesses focused on reprogramming the therapeutic landscape, ultimately extending and improving the quality of life for individuals.
We are honored to work alongside the GC founding team, and to partner with co-founders and leading scientists, Parastoo Khoshakhlagh as CEO and Alex Ng as CSO, as well as George Church, who is world renowned for his work as an academic entrepreneur and a pioneer in the longevity field. GCTx’s technology is built on TFome, a complete collection of human transcription factors that Parastoo and Alex worked on while they were members of George’s lab group at Harvard. George also donated his stem cells, which were programmed into the cells that GCTx uses, so as Parastoo and Alex say he has “skin in the game”.
We look forward to working with George, Parastoo and Alex to advance their unique approach to cell therapy engineering, uncovering new biological insights and broadening access to patients who need safer and more effective treatment options. Congratulations to the entire GC Therapeutics team!
