NANOMEDICINE FOR ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION TOLERANCE (PHOENIX)

PROBLEM: Today, organ transplant medicine is limited by life-long immunosuppression and vulnerability to infections, malignancies and cardiovascular diseases, and by a 20% rate of long-term graft failure.SOLUTION: PHOENIX reprograms the local immune micro-environment around a graft organ, inducing long-term transplant tolerance without broader systemic immunosuppression.

FOUNDATIONS: Our expert teams have already discovered novel peptide-MHC complex-based nanomedicines for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. This project will transform, deploy and validate this nano-technology platform for transplant medicine.

We have unique expertise in kidney and liver murine transplant models as well as liver transplantation in pigs and have established a molecular engineering pipeline for immune-protein synthesis to enable future clinical translation.

Extensive clinical-trial expertise will enable us to progress efficiently from this project towards the clinic.WORKPLAN: We are designing and building a unique nanomedicine which delivers ubiquitous or self-antigens - common to all humans that will redirect the host immune response against the graft toward regulation and tolerance development.

These medicines will be demonstrated in murine and porcine models, laying the foundation for human clinical trials immediately post-project.

SUMMARY: This project combines innovative multi-disciplinary approaches, building on a proven foundation, to deliver a novel therapy which will have a transformative positive effect on organ transplant patients and healthcare.