Moving cell-based immunotherapies to fight bacterial lung infections into the clinics

Harnessing the immune system to combat global diseases has introduced a new era in modern medicine. The iMAClung proposal will extend this concept and will pave the way for the first immune cell-based therapy to combat bacterial airway infections. With more than 2 million deaths around the world in 2020, lower respiratory tract infections are still the deadliest communicable disease with unmet medical need, highlighting the necessity for radical new approaches to develop therapeutic avenues. The iMAClung proposal aims at the adoptive transfer of human macrophages directly into the infected lung and to restore the endogenous alveolar macrophage (AM) cell pool to efficiently resolve bacterial airway infections and to mediate lung regeneration at the same time. iMAClung will harness the unique features of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to use macrophages (iMonoMac) as a cell-based immunotherapy following the adoptive transfer of these cells directly to the side of pulmonary infection. iMAClung is built upon the pioneering work of the ERC-Stg “iPSC2Therapy”, in which the anti-bacterial activity of iMonoMac against a variety of pulmonary (myco)bacterial infections has been successfully demonstrated in vivo. In addition, “iPSC2Therapy” has also successful shown the first scalable production of “off-the-shelf” iMonoMac using industry compatible bioreactors, which now paves the way for the development of seminal (non)therapeutic concepts. To enable clinical transfer, iMAClung will build a team of medical, scientific and industrial experts, all dedicated to bring iMonoMac into humans. To enter the next stage of the clinical translation pipeline, a path towards the clinics will be developed, which will facilitate subsequent exploitation and transfer into patients. iMAClung will bridge the seminal therapeutic concept from bench to bedside, having broad value for patients, society, medical personal, and the healthcare/biopharmaceutical industry within Europe and beyond.