T cell activation has been very much to the fore over the last couple of years with many companies looking at different ways to use them against cancer cells, with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, vaccines or monoclonal antibodies. There are situations though, where T cells are not necessarily a good thing.

Graft versus Host disease (GvHD) is an area of tremendous unmet medical need that is triggering the interest of a number of biotech and rare disease companies such as Alexion Pharmaceuticals (ALXN).

Houston based Bellicum Pharmaceuticals (BLCM), whose IPO raised around $140M last month, have said they plan to spend most of the funds on bringing to market a new cell therapy that could make stem cell transplants more effective and reduce GvHD. They also have a CAR-T therapy in early development.

Indeed, at last month’s ASH 2014 annual meeting in San Francisco, GvHD was very much a hot topic, with data presented in the plenary session by Dr Wei Li on a novel biomarker for GI GvHD.

 

This post discusses one of the GvHD oral sessions at ASH 2014, and includes post-presentation commentary from Dr Marcel van den Brink, who is an expert in the area. The related interview Dr Brink kindly gave BSB at the SITC annual meeting is well worth reading if you missed it.

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