Joint Support by Sanofi and JDRF Funds Ongoing Program for First-In-Class, Antigen-Specific Product to Target Autoimmunity Underlying Type 1 Diabetes
WATERTOWN, Mass. – October 15, 2014 – Selecta Biosciences, Inc., and JDRF, announced today that they have extended their joint research collaboration and attracted Sanofi as a partner in support of their program to develop a Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP™) immunotherapy with the long-term goal to treat and potentially prevent the underlying cause of type 1 diabetes. This collaborative research program is aimed at accelerating the advancement of an SVP immunotherapy designed to reset the immune system and restore tolerance to substances (antigens) that cause the immune attacks on insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Selecta's proprietary tolerogenic SVP products show potential to re-educate the immune system to stop or suppress pro-inflammatory responses against a specific antigen, thereby halting the undesirable immune reaction without causing harmful global immune suppression common with general immune system modulating drugs.
As part of their collaboration, JDRF and Sanofi are co-financing the program with the aim of advancing the SVP product candidate to the clinic. This next phase of the SVP development program has been structured as a grant award to Selecta in order to test up to four antigens that may succeed in stopping the autoimmune response that destroys beta cells.
"This agreement with JDRF and Sanofi is a next step in our research to advance SVP in type 1 diabetes," said Werner Cautreels, Ph.D., President and CEO at Selecta. "Selecta's proprietary SVP platform has broad applications in tolerance and Selecta is now active in multiple areas of high medical need, including undesired immune responses to biological drugs, and gene therapy, allergies, and autoimmune diseases."
"JDRF has a strategic research plan designed to deliver a sustained stream of new, life-changing therapies. Our support of Selecta is one part of our restoration research program whose ultimate goal is to restore a person's normal functioning – in short, a biological cure for type 1 diabetes. We see great potential in antigen-specific immunotherapies, like SVP, in helping us meet that goal, and have seen tremendous progress since we started our collaboration with Selecta," said Julia Greenstein, Ph.D., Vice President of Discovery Research at JDRF. "Bringing Sanofi on board is a key milestone towards accelerating the translation of this new class of therapies."
In June, 2011, JDRF and Selecta announced a research collaboration to support Selecta's development of antigen-specific tolerance products, which contributed to the screening of tolerance inducing immunomodulators and nanoparticles for applications in autoimmune diseases. This work serves as the basis for the new partnership with Sanofi.
In November, 2012, Sanofi and Selecta announced that they had formed a strategic global collaboration to discover highly targeted, antigen-specific immunotherapies for life-threatening allergies. Under the agreement, Sanofi obtained an exclusive license to develop an immunotherapy designed to abate acute immune responses against a life threatening food allergen and an option to develop two additional candidate immunotherapies for allergies each to a specific food or aeroallergen.
About Selecta
Selecta Biosciences, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel drugs that use immune modulating nanomedicines to generate targeted antigen-specific immune responses to prevent and treat disease. Selecta's proprietary Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP) platform creates a novel paradigm in immunotherapeutics and vaccines, enabling completely new applications while offering the potential of improved efficacy and safety profiles.
Selecta's immunomodulatory SVPs can induce antigen-specific immune tolerance, enabling them to be applied in a variety of therapeutic areas with large unmet medical need. The company is focused on three key near-term applications: inhibition of immunogenicity for biologic therapies, treatment of allergies, and treatment of autoimmune diseases. Immumogenicity adversely affects the safety and efficacy profile for many biological therapies, and is known to have caused the termination of a number of promising biological therapies in clinical development. Selecta's SVP is a product engine that has the potential to unlock the full therapeutic value of biologic therapies.
Through proprietary products and collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies and research organizations, Selecta is building a pipeline of product candidates to address unmet medical needs in serious and chronic diseases. Selecta Biosciences, Inc. is based in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. For more information, please visit www.selectabio.com.
About JDRF
JDRF is the leading global organization focused on type 1 diabetes (T1D) research. JDRF's goal is to progressively remove the impact of T1D from people's lives until we achieve a world without T1D. JDRF collaborates with a wide spectrum of partners and is the only organization with the scientific resources, regulatory influence and a working plan to bring life-changing therapies from the lab to the community. As the largest charitable supporter of T1D research, JDRF is currently sponsoring $568 million in charitable research in 17 countries. For more information, please visit www.jdrf.org.
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