Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTLA),  announced on 5/14/18 the addition of new scientific advisors in immuno-oncology and autoimmunity. The advisors hail from prestigious international institutions and collectively have both scientific and clinical expertise in cell therapies in these areas.

“The advisors we’ve assembled include researchers and physicians who are luminaries in their fields,” said Intellia President and Chief Executive Officer John Leonard, M.D. “Pursuing both in vivo and ex vivo pipelines, Intellia has a broad spectrum approach to genome editing in a variety of therapeutic applications using our CRISPR/Cas9 technology. We look forward to working alongside these experts and benefiting from their deep experience and insight, to drive development of our wholly owned ex vivo programs in immuno-oncology and autoimmunity.”

The following scientific leaders and clinicians are Intellia’s advisors on ex vivo cell therapy in immuno-oncology:

• Evren Alici, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor and group leader, hematology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
• Chiara Bonini, M.D., Ph.D., full professor, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele; deputy director, Division of Immunology, Transplantation and Infectious Diseases, Ospedale San Raffaele; and head, Experimental Hematology Unit, Ospedale San Raffaele, Italy
• Daniel DeAngelo, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, and director, clinical and translational research, adult leukemia, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, United States
• Saar Gill, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, University of Pennsylvania, United States
• Johanna Olweus, M.D., Ph.D., full professor and head, Department of Cancer Immunology, University of Oslo, and director, K.G. Jebsen Center for Cancer Immunotherapy, Norway
• E. John Wherry, Ph.D., Richard and Barbara Schiffrin President's Distinguished Professor of Microbiology, and director, Institute for Immunology, University of Pennsylvania, United States
• Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker, Ph.D., professor and chair, Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, and senior scientist, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Canada

These experts are Intellia’s advisors on ex vivo cell therapy in autoimmunity:

• Laurence Turka, M.D., chief scientific officer, Rheos Medicines; deputy director, Immune Tolerance Network; and professor of surgery and medicine (part-time), Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, United States
• Kathryn Wood, D.Phil., F.Med.Sci., emeritus professor of immunology, Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Intellia is conducting pre-clinical studies in eight therapeutic areas. It has established parnterships with Regeneron and Novartis. The Regeneron partnership was established in 2016 and gives Regeneron the rights to discover and develop CRISPR-based products against up to 10 targets, focused primarily on therapies for a broad range of diseases that may be treated by editing genes in the liver. Intellia will receive significant milestone and royalty payments on potential Regeneron products.

In 2015, Intellia and Novartis established a five-year research and development collaboration to accelerate the ex vivo development of new CRISPR/Cas9-based therapies using chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CARTs) and hematopoetic stem cells (HSCs). Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis received exclusive rights to develop all collaboration programs focused on engineered CARTs. Within HSCs, Novartis and Intellia will jointly advance multiple programs, and have agreed to a process for assigning development and ownership rights, which will enable Intellia to develop its own proprietary internal HSC pipeline.