Avectas has entered into a collaborative agreement with The Simon Laboratory at UC Davis, California, USA (UCD) to engage in the characterization of cells engineered with Avectas' proprietary, non-viral SOLUPORE™ cell engineering platform. Under the collaboration, The Simon Laboratory at UCD will characterize cells engineered using SOLUPORE™, leveraging UCD's unique cell membrane characterization expertise and assays.
The collaboration will involve the transfer of Avectas' technology to The Simon Laboratory where the group will engineer immune cells and study the delivery of cargoes such as DNA, mRNA, proteins and gene editing tools to cells, while retaining high levels of cell viability and functionality, for autologous and allogeneic cell therapies. The outputs of this exciting collaboration will inform the development of next generation Cell and Gene therapies.
This collaboration builds on Avectas' recent developments including a partnership with Onk Therapeutics, Series C funding, the issuance of a key U.S. Patent (USPN 10,612,042) and new collaborations with Vycellix of Florida, USA, the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) in Toronto, Canada and entering the new NK Cell Centre of Excellence at Karolinska Institute, Sweden, as a partner.
"We are excited to collaborate with The Simon Laboratory and its world-class team to characterise our engineered cells in an entirely new way. This new partnership will help us to engineer cells in more complex ways while preserving the quality and fitness of the cells," Michael Maguire, PhD, CEO of Avectas, said.
"This is a great opportunity for my laboratory to team up with Avectas' cutting edge technology to modify immune cells for therapeutic uses. A major focus of our group is to understand how chemical and mechanical forces acting on immune cells enable them to localize at sites of inflammation. The partnership with Avectas will help us evaluate how these same forces play a role to delivering mRNA and proteins to immune cells and thereby extend their therapeutic applications," Professor Scott Simon said.