Prime Medicine and Cimeio Therapeutics Announce Research Collaboration to Develop Prime Edited Shielded-Cell & Immunotherapy Pairs for Genetic Diseases, Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Myelodysplastic Syndrome

-- Collaboration combines Prime Medicine’s Prime Editing platform with Cimeio Therapeutics’ Shielded Cell and Immunotherapy Pairs (SCIP) platform --

-- Aim to reduce toxicity of conditioning regimens and introduce new therapeutic options that can expand the utility of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplant and in vivo genetic therapies --

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and BASEL, Switzerland, June 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prime Medicine, Inc. (Nasdaq: PRME), a biotechnology company committed to delivering a new class of differentiated one-time curative genetic therapies, and Cimeio Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that is reinventing cell therapy through its leadership in the emerging field of epitope shielding, today announced a research collaboration to combine their respective technologies, including Prime Medicine’s Prime Editing platform and Cimeio’s Shielded Cell and Immunotherapy Pairs (SCIP) platform.

The goal of the research is to improve the safety and effectiveness of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplants to treat genetic diseases, acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), as well as enable the in vivo selection of edited HSCs to potentially remove the need for transplantation entirely.

HSC transplant offers a potentially curative approach for many debilitating and life-threatening diseases, including malignancies such as AML and rare genetic diseases like Gaucher’s and Hurler’s, though its clinical utility is limited by the current need for myeloablative conditioning regimens and the risk of post-transplant progression of malignant disease. Cimeio’s SCIP platform combined with Prime Editing may significantly improve the accessibility, eligibility and outcomes for patients who could benefit from HSC transplant. These combined technologies may also enable selection of in vivo edited HSCs, which could allow for the treatment of genetic diseases without a transplant.

Under the terms of the agreement, Prime Medicine will develop a Prime Editor for Cimeio’s CD117 shielding variant that will then be evaluated by both companies. CD117 is a receptor tyrosine kinase expressed on normal HSCs and on leukemia cells, and therefore is an attractive target for an antibody-based conditioning therapy for patients needing a stem cell transplant, or for patients with AML or MDS needing new treatment options.