Reprogramming T Cells to Cross the Brain’s Border

I'm Daniel Levine, and this is the Bio Report. One of the challenges of treating brain tumors is delivering potent biologic therapies across the blood brain barrier. Adaptin Bio has developed platform technology that harnesses a patient's own T cells to transport bispecific therapeutic payloads across the blood brain barrier and into other targeted tissue with an initial focus on treating glioblastoma. We spoke to Michael Roberts, co founder and CEO of Adaptin Bio, about the unmet need in glioblastoma, the limitations of current blood brain barrier crossing strategies, and how the company's platform seeks to change the treatment paradigm by using patient derived T cells as delivery vehicles for targeted biologics. Michael, thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure to be here, Danny. We're gonna talk about difficult to treat brain tumors, Adaptin Bio, and its platform technology for developing therapies across the blood brain barrier. Let's start with glioblastoma. What is it? Glioblastoma, it's often called, glioblastoma multiforme or GBM for short. And it's a grade four astrocytoma, which means it's the highest stage of malignancy, meaning that it's by the time you're already diagnosed, it's well advanced. So it is the most aggressive in, of of the primary brain tumors in adults, and it's, characterized by a couple of things. First, it's rapid growth. Right? So once it's diagnosed, we're talking rapid growth within months. It has, what's called diffuse infiltration, which means that it goes into the surrounding brain tissue. I like to, you know, tell people that if they just put their hand up and they spread their fingers, what you what the physician sees on the radiographic image is basically the palm of your hand. That's what they can see. The fingers represent tentacles of tumor cells that go into the rest of the brain that they don't see. Right? So it has this diffuse infiltration. And then, of course, I think one of the most important things here is is is has a marked genetic and cellular heterogeneity, meaning that not all cells in the tumor are alike. They have very different behaviors. They have different, signatures. So when you treat, the brain tumor, it's, with a single entity, it's not it's gonna escape. It's not gonna be effective. K? So it you know, one thing I can tell about, glioblastoma is that it is relentless. Right? So it quickly develops, by the pay by the time the patient gets to the physician, and typically some of the symptoms of of of the patients are, you know, persistent and worsening headaches. They get seizures, which is often the first, thing because, again, if you have headaches all the time, that may not be a brain tumor. But when you have a seizure, that usually tells you that there's something else involved. And then, of course, you know, family, friends, they may see cognitive or personality changes in you. And then there's these things called focal neurological episodes. And these are things like weaknesses …