Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Carisma Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: CARM) announced on Sunday promising preclinical data on engineered macrophages for treating liver fibrosis at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) The Liver Meeting 2024.

These results highlight the pre-clinical efficacy of the company's designed macrophages in multiple liver fibrosis models and offer a novel, off-the-shelf potential treatment option for patients with fibrotic liver disease including advanced metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH).

New preclinical results demonstrate that macrophages can be genetically engineered to target specific key pathways underlying liver disease with factors including TIM4 (restores efferocytosis), relaxin (inhibits hepatic stellate cell activation), and IL10 (reduces inflammation). Notably, a single dose of macrophages expressing TIM4, alone or together with relaxin, significantly reduced liver fibrosis and hepatic stellate cell activation in the translationally relevant choline-deficient, L-amino acid-defined, high-fat diet (CDAHFD) MASH model. The engineered macrophages were well tolerated and outperformed non-engineered cells in all models.

The company is expected to nominate a development candidate for its liver fibrosis program in the first quarter of 2025.