Contract Awarded for Acute Radiation Therapy

Cellerant Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company in San Carlos, California, received a five-year contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), in the Department of Health and Human Services to develop CLT-008, the company’s cellular therapy for the treatment of acute radiation syndrome.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says acute radiation syndrome is a serious illness that occurs when the entire body (or most of it) receives a high dose of radiation, usually over a short period of time. Many survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs in the 1940s and many of the firefighters who first responded after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986 became ill with the disease.

Cellerant says CLT-008 consists of myeloid (from bone marrow) progenitor cells. These are progenitor cells of the blood forming system that have lost the stem cell ability to self-renew and are restricted to creating mature myeloid cells, which include red blood cells, platelets, and the immune cells that fight bacterial and fungal infections.

CLT-008 is currently in a Phase 1 clinical trial with patients undergoing cord blood transplants for the treatment of hematological malignancies. In preclinical tests, CLT-008 has been shown effective in protecting against lethal radiation, preventing infection, facilitating stem cell engraftment, and improving overall survival. Cellerant is developing CLT-008 as a treatment for chemotherapy induced neutropenia, protection from exposure to acute radiation, and facilitating cord blood transplantation.

BARDA’s contract, valued at $153.2 million over five years, covers the scaling up manufacturing, expanded human safety trials, and non-clinical effectiveness studies in animals, through licensing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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