Regen BioPharma, Inc. announced development of a novel immunotherapy for treatment of solid tumors. Current cellular approaches to kill cancer involve administration of a specific type of modified T cell called "chimeric antigen receptor" (CAR) T cell. Despite significant progress being made in using CAR-T cells to treat leukemia, little progress has been made in solid tumors such as those found in lung, brain, breast, prostate and colon.

It is believed that solid tumors possess an abnormal "microenvironment" which physically prevents T cells from entering the tumor, as well as inactivating T cells that do manage to enter. The microenvironment consists of surrounding blood vessels, immune cells, fibroblasts, signaling molecules and an extracellular matrix. The solid tumor is surrounded by its microenvironment and constantly interacts with it.

The current approach developed by the Company, for which a provisional patent application has been submitted, involves initial treatment of the tumor microenvironment with cells of the innate immune system called CAR-M and CAR-NK cells. These cells, which also begin to attack the tumor, are able to "normalize" the tumor microenvironment, thus allowing CAR-T cells to enter and attack the tumor.