Catamaran Bio will have non-exclusive clinical and commercial rights to use MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation technology and ExPERT platform.

MaxCyte has signed a strategic platform licence (SPL) with Catamaran, a company focused on developing off-the-shelf chimeric antigen receptor natural killer (CAR-NK) cell therapies used to treat a wide range of cancers, particularly solid tumors.

While financial details of this deal remain undisclosed, MaxCyte has confirmed it will receive platform licensing fees and program-related revenue under the terms of the agreement.

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“The ability to leverage synthetic biology to engineer cell therapies will help drive innovative solutions for solid tumor cancer treatment. At MaxCyte, we are passionate about driving the discovery, development and manufacturing of next-generation, cell-based medicines to tackle complex diseases and cancer,” said Doug Doerfler, president, and CEO of MaxCyte.

Electroporation is a physical transfection method where an electrical pulse can create temporary pores in cell membranes where substances such as nucleic acids can pass into cells.

This is the 19^th licence deal MaxCyte has signed with drugmakers. When the firm signed its 17^th SPL deal with South Korean company LG Chem in July 2022, Doerfler told this publication the ExPERT platform works by cells being placed into a “a conductive solution and a brief electrical pulse ‘relaxes’ cellular membranes, allowing DNA, RNA or other molecules to enter. It simplifies payload transfection into almost any cell type and is suitable for both transient (temporary) and stable (permanent) expression. This process is high-performance and scalable, with unmatched post-transfection cell viability, and is designed to modify cells for research or clinical use.”

Furthermore, Catamaran has created a platform named TAILWIND, which it says has been designed for engineering, processing, and increasing NK cells into safe and effective cell therapy products to treat various types of cancer.