Modular Antigen-Specific T-cell Biofactories for Calibrated In Vivo Synthesis of Engineered Proteins.

An artificial cell-signaling pathway is developed that capitalizes on the T-cell's innate extravasation ability and transforms it into a vector (T-cell Biofactory) for synthesizing calibrated amounts of engineered proteins in vivo. The modularity of this pathway enables reprogramming of the T-cell Biofactory to target biomarkers on different disease cells, e.g. cancer, viral infections, autoimmune disorders. It can be expected that the T-cell Biofactory leads to a "living drug" that extravasates to the disease sites, assesses the disease burden, synthesizes the calibrated amount of engineered therapeutic proteins upon stimulation by the diseased cells, and reduces targeting of normal cells.