MiNK Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: INKT) announced that its clinical-stage agenT-797 iNKT cell therapy platform has been selected as a therapeutic cell system within a team funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop room-temperature storage technologies for cell therapies.

The selection is part of ARPA-H's BioStabilization Systems (BoSS) program, a four-year initiative with up to $87 million in committed funding. The program seeks to move cell therapy storage from cryogenic temperatures near -196°C to room temperature near 21°C, reducing dependence on cold-chain infrastructure.

MiNK is a member of the Reversible Ambient Biostabilization (RAB) team led by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. Other team members include Likarda, CPSI Biotech, OFC Life Sciences, Case BioSciences, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Fresenius Kabi. The team plans to use AI-assisted design of experiments to optimize formulation and stabilization parameters, and will employ freeze-assisted droplet drying to achieve a stable product.

"Cold-chain logistics remain one of the most significant barriers to scaling access to allogeneic cell therapies," said Jennifer Buell, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of MiNK Therapeutics. "Removing the cold chain could take that deployability to a new level: a living immune therapy stocked like a conventional drug and administered wherever critically ill patients present, including remote, resource-limited, and austere settings."

MiNK will contribute its allogeneic iNKT platform, proprietary cGMP manufacturing infrastructure, and cell-therapy development expertise to the program.

"iNKT cells are a rigorous benchmark for stabilization because their value lies in rapid, coordinated function," said Nils Rudqvist, Ph.D., Senior Director of Research at MiNK Therapeutics. "Pairing that scalability with room-temperature stability could take cell therapy beyond the specialized centers equipped for cryopreserved products and bring it to community hospitals and patients worldwide."

The information above is based on a press release statement from MiNK Therapeutics.