Dendritic Cells: NemodDC™


Dendritic cells (DC) are cells of hematopoetic origin that play a major role in the cellular mediated immune response. Dendritic cells take up and process antigens and present them in the context of MHC molecules on the cell surface. Antigen presentation by MHC molecules stimulates the cellular immune response via T-cells.

NEMOD has generated the worldwide first fully functional human dendritic cell line, called NemodDC. NemodDC is based on a cell line from a patient with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). This cell line corresponds to precursor cells (prec-NMDC) which can be differentiated into immature DC (i-NMDC) and further matured to mature DC (m-NMDC) with all the phenotypic and functional characteristics typical of human dendritic cells. NemodDC has been developed for the immunotherapy of diseases such as cancer and also as a tool for research and validation. (cf. DC-Tools)
DC-Therapy:    NemodDC as an off-the-shelf vaccine
for immunotherapy

Immunization with dendritic cells (DCs) loaded with disease relevant antigens is an approach to immunotherapy that shows excellent promise. To date such immunization schemes have used the patient's own DCs (autologous DCs). Apart from the limitation of being patient-specific, quality varies, standardization is difficult and numbers of DCs are limited.

NemodDC is a human cell line that provides unlimited numbers of standardized fully-functional DCs. Based on preclinical data, NemodDC is being developed as an off-the-shelf semi-allogeneic DC vaccine inducing specific immune responses via syngeneic antigen presenting HLA (e.g. HLA A2, A3 and B44) and bystander non-specific helper T-cell responses via allogeneic HLA. NemodDC is virus free, serum free and safe. NemodDC does not grow in vitro or in vivo in the mature antigen presenting differentiation state (m-NMDC).

NemodDC based vaccines can potentially be used for treatment of cancer, infectious diseases and for tolerance induction in auto immune diseases or transplantation. NEMOD’s own development program focuses on NemodDC-based cancer vaccines.

NemodDC is suitable for loading with antigens in form of MHC class peptides, proteins, cell lysates or by transfection via electroporation with genetic material or via viral vectors, or by cell fusion with cancer cells. NemodDC is also attractive for a prime/boost vaccination setting in order to increase the effectivity of other vaccines or break tolerances, e.g. DNA vaccines, allogeneic whole cells, peptide vaccines. NemodDC can be directly loaded with the vaccines as antigens, and can be used for ex vivo generation of specific T-cells for adoptive T-cell therapy.

NEMOD has a strong IP position on the NemodDC platform and is looking for both co-development partners with proprietary antigens for cancer indications and license partners for other indications like infectious diseases, autoimmunity and transplantation.

Project Status: late preclinical development, GMP cell banking and production in progress