Aiming to solve the problem of side effects of IL-2 immunotherapy, Xinrui completes US$55 million in Series A financing

▎The content team editor of WuXi AppTec today, Asher Biotherapeutics, a company dedicated to the development of precision targeted immunotherapy, announced the completion of a US$55 million Series A financing.

The company's unique technology is called cis-targeting technology, which attempts to selectively activate specific immune cell types to obtain the desired immune response while reducing the side effects of the therapy.

The company's main product candidate, AB248, is a fusion protein that selectively activates the IL-2 receptor signaling pathway in CD8-positive T cells.

IL-2 is one of the first immunotherapies approved for the treatment of cancer.

As a cytokine, it has the ability to activate CD8-positive T cells, natural killer cells and promote their proliferation.
Therefore, it has been approved by the US FDA for the treatment of melanoma and renal cell carcinoma.

However, IL-2 also has the ability to activate regulatory T cells (Treg) with immunosuppressive functions.

This will instead inhibit the anti-cancer immune response of T cells, and may cause other toxic side effects.

Therefore, one of the focus of research and development in the IL-2 field is to develop activators that can selectively activate the IL-2 receptor signaling pathway in CD8-positive T cells.

For example, bempegaldesleukin, jointly developed by Nekta Therapeutics and Bristol-Myers Squibb, is an IL-2 signaling pathway agonist that tends to bind to IL-2Rβγ.

Through the acquisition of Synthorin, Sanofi also hopes to use synthetic biology technology to design IL-2 signaling pathway agonists that selectively activate CD8-positive T cells and natural killer cells.

The "cis-targeting" strategy adopted by Asher Biotherapeutics is different from the strategies of the companies mentioned above.

The AB248 developed by the company is a fusion protein.
One part of it can bind to the IL-2 receptor on the cell surface, while the other part binds to a specific biomarker expressed on the surface of CD8-positive T cells.

Only when the two parts are combined with two different molecules on the cell at the same time, can they have the effect of activating the cell.

▲The "cis-targeting" strategy requires the therapeutic protein to bind to two different molecules on the cell at the same time to be able to work (picture source: Asher Biotherapeutics company official website) In preclinical experiments, AB248 significantly activates CD8-positive T cells At the same time, it hardly activates natural killer cells and Treg cells.

It has shown good anti-cancer activity in a variety of preclinical tumor models.

▲AB248 specifically activates CD8-positive T cells (picture source: AsherBiotherapeutics official website) Asher Biotherapeutics CEO Dr.
Craig Gibbs said: “Our founders decided to focus on developing immunotherapies that only work in specific immune cell subtypes .

this solution is expected to provide candidates with a higher selectivity therapy, which may be used to treat a variety of cancer types, as well as the treatment of infectious and autoimmune diseases.

"Reference: [1] Asher Bio Launches with $55 Million Series A FinancingLed by Third Rock Ventures to Discover and Develop Highly SpecificImmunotherapies Using a Novel Technology Platform.
Retrieved March 23, 2021, from https:// /home/20210323005426/en/[2] Asher Bio.
Retrieved March 23, 2021, from https://asherbio.
com/our-platform/ Note: This article aims to introduce medical and health research progress, not a treatment plan recommendation.

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