Lentitek and Annogen join forces to improve the quality and safety of T-cell therapies

Barcelona, The Netherlands – September 10, 2025

Lentitek and Annogen join forces to improve the quality and safety of T-cell therapies. This collaboration, jointly announced at the CGTI Leadership Summit today, aims to improve lentivirus-based CAR-T therapies by eliminating undesired transgene expression during viral vector manufacturing as well as restricting in vivo expression of the CAR to T-cells.

Annogen has developed a range of novel, validated promoters designed to drive high expression specifically in conventional T-cells but not in >20 other cell types, including the HEK293T cells used to manufacture lentiviral vectors, e.g. for T-cell therapies. This precision is crucial as expression of the transgene both during vector production and in non-target cells in vivo can compromise efficacy and biosafety.

Lentitek has a unique vector manufacturing technology preventing incorrect splicing and associated unwanted payload expression, which will now be combined with Annogen’s T-cell specific promoters. We believe that the combinations of our technologies has the potential to raise the bar for the next generation of in vivo CAR-T therapies, ensuring safer, more effective treatments for patients.

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Edinburgh-based Lentitek Ltd has a unique manufacturing technology that can significantly enhance lentiviral vector quality, purity and yield by minimizing vector genome splicing and payload breakthrough expression.

Amsterdam-based Annogen BV is the go-to partner for advanced therapy developers, providing off-the-shelf promoters and tailored promoter designs, validated through large-scale in vitro and in vivo screening.  

 

 

 

 

Why promoter design is no longer just an expression checkbox, it’s the key to therapeutic endurance.

Why promoter design is no longer just an expression checkbox, it’s the key to therapeutic endurance.

Promoter design is becoming central to durable cell and gene therapy, as the field moves beyond delivery and toward precise expression control. Standard promoters like CMV or PGK often fail to solve key clinical challenges: off-target activity, “always-on” expression that can drive cellular exhaustion, and epigenetic silencing that shuts therapies down in vivo. Annogen’s SuRE™ platform addresses these bottlenecks by experimentally screening millions of non-coding DNA fragments in relevant models and refining designs with machine learning. The result is not a generic promoter, but a validated, non-viral promoter tailored for the specific tissue, condition, and therapeutic context.

VectorY’s Clinical Milestone and the Shift Toward Experimentally-Validated Promoters

VectorY’s Clinical Milestone and the Shift Toward Experimentally-Validated Promoters

The first patient dosing in VectorY Therapeutics’ PIONEER-ALS trial marks a definitive shift in gene therapy, moving past the “conservative” reliance on blunt viral promoters and the “digital guesses” of AI. While many rely on algorithms built from incomplete and insensitive data, VTx-002 is powered by an Annogen genome-derived promoter discovered through rigorous, large-scale experimental validation. This milestone proves that true therapeutic precision isn’t predicted in a black box—it is found by interrogating the genome directly to deliver the biological truth required for the clinic.

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