Law firm Stephenson Harwood LLP has advised gene and cell therapy company Oxford Biomedica on its collaboration with biopharmaceutical company PhoreMost, to develop next-generation CAR-T cell therapies.

CAR-T therapies, or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies, modify T-cells to recognise cancer cells in order to more effectively target and destroy them.

PhoreMost, a UK-based business dedicated to developing drugs against intractable disease targets, will deploy its in-house expertise and next-generation phenotypic screening platform, SITESEEKER®, to identify therapeutic candidates for Oxford Biomedica's LentiVector® gene therapy delivery system. The programme will initially focus on CAR-T therapy and aims to develop next-generation cell therapies with significantly improved efficacy and durability.

The Stephenson Harwood team advising Oxford Biomedica was led by partner Alexandra Pygall, and assisted predominantly by Anne Stoffels.