RedKnight is delighted to announce it has supported LIfT Bioscience Ltd (LIfT) with its successful application to Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst (BMC) competition, securing £1.14m of non-dilutive grant funding. With a score of 96.1%, it was the highest scoring funded project in the round. LIfT is a disruptive biotech bringing to market a first-in-class immunomodulatory alpha neutrophil (IMAN) cell therapy designed to overcome the limitations of current immunotherapies in solid tumours. LIfT's ground-breaking IMANs not only directly kill tumour cells in an innate antigen-independent manner, but recruit and modulate recipients' cytotoxic effector cells, such as T cells and NK cells, to give a durable response and long-lasting anti-tumour immunity. LIfTs first generation IMANs are manufactured from the haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) of donors who possess exceptionally cytotoxic neutrophils. IMANs are generated using LIfTs proprietary Neutrophil-based Leukocyte Infusion Therapy (N-LIfT) platform, with future iPSC-derived and gene engineered products in the pipeline. The aim of the BMC project, a collaboration between LIfT and the Saeb-Parsy Lab (SPL) at the University of Cambridge is to explore and investigate the application of IMAN cell therapy products in SPL’s cutting edge humanised in vivo model systems. Alex Blyth, Chief Executive Officer of LIfT BioSciences, commented: “The awarding of this grant from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, is an exciting step that will help expedite our pipeline of new products and their combinations into the clinic and will improve outcomes through the foresight it provides. Current standard mouse models do not have the right chemokines and growth factors to support human neutrophils optimally. Tumour-bearing humanised mice that have been adapted to support human neutrophils are therefore very useful for more accurate modelling of the effects of neutrophils for early insights into what we might see in human trials. We will now conduct groundbreaking in vivo studies to explore the impact of IMAN cell therapies in solid tumour and immunology models uniquely available at the Saeb-Parsy Lab.” Fundamental to IMANs mechanism of action (MoA) is their ability to modulate the hostile solid tumour microenvironment (TME). Standard in vivo tumour models in immunodeficient mice lack the necessary human immune system components to investigate recipient immunomodulation by therapeutics, and thereby underplay the effectiveness of cell therapy modalities with this MoA by only assaying direct cytotoxicity. Additionally, SPL's humanised models utilise xenografted patient-derived tumour material (PDX), which allows a closer approximation of tumour architecture and component subsets that comprise the solid TME, and which are classically hostile to cell therapy infiltration and efficacy. The SPL humanised in vivo models represent the currently achieved experimental apotheosis in terms of in vivo modelling of the TME as would be encountered by IMANs during human clinical trials. The BMC funding will allow the project team to perform ground-breaking in vivo (and associated in vitro) activities to explore the impact of IMAN cell therapies in solid tumour indications. State-of-the-art -omics techniques will be employed to generate a holistic view of IMANs potential in solid tumours, unveiling biomarkers for both safety and efficacy of IMANs for future clinical research.