Public Funding for Cytoseek Limited

This project, inspired by the success of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) based COVID-19 vaccines that reached \>1B people worldwide, aims to harness CytoSeek's state-of-the-art Artificial Membrane-Binding Protein (AMBP) technology for the precise targeting of LNPs to specific cell populations. This innovative approach holds potential for delivering advanced cancer therapeutics, including CAR-T cells produced in the body, and vaccines against tumour and beyond. Success in this project will yield a new research platform to accelerate the development of targeted-LNP therapeutics, reduce off-target effects, which will be used internally but also deployed on the market to provide access to the powerful technology. It will enable targeting LNPs to be developed in a fraction of the time when compared to alternative chemistry-based approaches, and will enable high-throughput screening procedures.. The project will also advance the AMBP technology in its preclinical development, accelerating its path to clinical readiness.

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In 2018, more than 9.5 million people worldwide died from cancer, with more than 18 million new cancer incidences reported. A new approach using human immune cells to attack tumours is showing promise in the clinic. Within this exciting new field, CAR-T therapy has been shown to be effective against blood-based cancers, such as acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Unfortunately, cancers that involve the formation of solid tumours, which make up 85% of cancer deaths worldwide, are resistant to current cellular immunotherapies, which severely limits the range of treatments available to the public. In an effort to overcome this limitation, CytoSeek has teamed up with the University of Birmingham (UoBi) to develop a new class of smart CAR-T that can attack solid tumours. The collaboration involves applying CytoSeek cell painting technology to "supercharge" the immune cells and allow them to invade and kill cancer cells in solid tumours.

During a heart attack, muscles in the heart suffer damage because of the loss of oxygen. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for the body to repair this damage, which weakens the heart and increases the chance of subsequent heart failure. An exciting new approach to repair this damage involves injecting stem cells into the surrounding areas to help repair the damage. However, results from medical trials have so far been modest at best. This is in part due to the difficulty in getting the cells to remain in the region of the damaged tissue. Accordingly, at CytoSeek, we are developing a new technology that enables cells to home to damaged tissue in the heart, which should drastically increase the efficacy of cell therapy. The process involves "painting" the patient’s own cells with a special designer protein that enables the cells to recognise and bind to the damaged tissue and assist the regeneration.