Atara Biotherapeutics Announces Submission of Investigational New Drug Application for ATA3219 for Treatment of Lupus Nephritis

Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATRA), a leader in T-cell immunotherapy, leveraging its novel allogeneic Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) T-cell platform to develop transformative therapies for patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases, today announced its recent submission of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the use of ATA3219 as a monotherapy for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) with kidney involvement (lupus nephritis [LN]).

“Despite therapeutic advances, there remains high unmet need in lupus nephritis, where standard of care and approved therapies have limited efficacy that often rely on multi-year, if not lifelong immune suppression,” said Rajani Dinavahi, Chief Medical Officer at Atara. “We are dedicated to advancing medical breakthroughs with innovative cell therapies that truly make a difference. We look forward to working with the FDA to initiate this study and advance ATA3219 into the clinic to potentially bring a new disease-modifying option for patients suffering from this chronic disease.”

ATA3219 is an allogeneic anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. ATA3219 consists of allogeneic EBV T cells that express a CAR targeting CD19 antigen, which is present on the cell surface of most B cells involved in B-cell mediated autoimmune diseases. Key features of ATA3219 include clinically validated technologies designed for T-cell memory phenotype and associated durability, optimized expansion and mitigated exhaustion from a novel 1XX costimulatory domain, and retained endogenous T-cell receptor as a key survival signal that contributes to cell persistence. Using an allogeneic approach may address the significant technical, operational, manufacturing cost, and access challenges seen with autologous CAR T products, permitting the rapid treatment of potentially thousands of high-risk patients. Treatment will be facilitated for patients and physicians in avoiding apheresis and lengthy patient-by-patient manufacturing as ATA3219 would be rapidly available as an off-the-shelf treatment from finished product inventory.

“We are particularly excited to bring this allogeneic CD19 CAR T to the clinic as it has been designed to offer a differentiated profile by incorporating multiple clinically validated attributes,” said Cokey Nguyen, Chief Scientific and Technical Officer at Atara. “Our goal is to demonstrate that ATA3219 can provide deep and durable remission, allowing the immune system to reset and potentially transform a new therapeutic area with an off-the-shelf CAR T approach.”