SOLVING FOR SELECTIVITY
What if we could harness the power of immunotherapies with unprecedented precision and direct them to only the cells that matter?
IT’S POSSIBLE WITH CIS-TARGETING
OUR CIS-TARGETED IMMUNOTHERAPIES solve the selectivity problem by engaging both an immunomodulatory receptor and a specific surface marker on the target cell. This directs the therapy to only the desired immune cell type while avoiding counterproductive signaling that limits efficacy and reduces therapeutic index.
Current Therapies
Current cytokine immunotherapies have pleiotropic effects – activation of one cell type may promote efficacy, but the simultaneous activation of other cell types may have the counter-productive effects of limiting efficacy and driving toxicity. In addition, undesired cell types act as pharmacologic sinks, limiting the amount of the immunotherapy that is able to get to the desired target cells.
Targeted Immunomodulation
With this innovative design for immunotherapies, our cis-targeted molecules offer a new level of selectivity, leading to differentiated medicines across multiple indications, with optimized efficacy and minimized toxicity.
DIFFERENTIATED, TRANSFORMATIVE
IMMUNOTHERAPIES
With our unique, modular and validated cis-targeting platform, we have the ability to create differentiated, transformational immunotherapies. The platform can be applied systematically, combining different immunomodulators and targeting antibodies to provide the appropriate signal to the intended immune effector cell type, resulting in improved therapeutic outcomes.
This powerful and versatile approach can also be tailored to activate different immune cell types to address multiple therapeutic indications.
The modularity enabled by our cis-targeting platform has allowed us to rapidly leverage our lead drug program into a pipeline of de-risked assets. Additional programs follow-on rapidly and are de-risked as one portion of the new molecule is derived from the lead program.
Preclinical proof-of-concept has been established for three cis-targeted drug programs that include directing two distinct cytokines to two different cell types.
how we create
cis-targeted immunotherapies
At Asher Bio, we have built a discovery platform to engineer cis-targeted immunotherapies based on the following steps:
DEFINE
desired biology
In this first step, we select an immunomodulator and interrogate the biology of each immune cell type to determine which cells promote the desired therapeutic benefit and which cells are responsible for side effects and antagonistic effects.
Level of activation of immune cell subtypes in response to immunomodulators
ENGINEER
cis-targeted immunotherapy
We attenuate the affinity of the immunomodulator for its receptor across all cell types. We fuse it with a targeting moiety that binds a specific target only found on the desired immune cell type. This avidity restores activity for only the targeted cell type.
OPTIMIZE
pharmacological profile
We optimize key parameters of our cis-targeted immunotherapy to create the desired pharmacological profile.
