TrojanDC - A BREAKTHROUGH DEEP-TECH INNOVATION FOR CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY

The Challenge: Cancer remains one of the major challenges to modern medicine affecting one-in-three people in Europe.

Available immunotherapies are effective in a limited number of patients and often lose their efficacy due to heterogeneity and lack of tumor-antigen presentation. Despite these shortcomings, the global immune-oncology market is one of the fastest growing therapeutics markets. Large players like Merck, Pfizer, and Novartis have shown to be keen on acquisitions of high-potential technologies.

There is thus an urgent need and high demand for innovative cost-effective immunotherapies consistently effective in a broader range of cancer patients.The innovation: Asgard Therapeutics is a pre-clinical start-up company developing innovative cancer immunotherapies based in in-vivo cell reprogramming.

The company is led by the scientific co-founder and CEO Cristiana Pires who, together with her co-founders, pioneered direct reprogramming to induce antigen-presenting dendritic cells.

Asgard raised a € 6M seed round of funding to generate proof-of-concept for its lead candidate TrojanDC, a paradigm-shifting immunotherapy that reprograms cancer cells into antigen-presenting dendritic cells, allowing the presentation of their tumor antigens to the immune system, thereby eliciting potent anti-cancer immunity.

TrojanDC has the potential to overcome challenges with current immunotherapies by reinstating cancer immunogenicity.

The Women TechEU grant will allow defining a clear roadmap for the IND-enabling studies and FIH clinical trials and creating a comprehensive business plan required to raise Series A funding in Q4 2023.The Impact: With strong proof-of-concept data already obtained, an exceptional team of high-performing scientists and a strong syndicate of seasoned VCs, Asgard Therapeutics is in a unique position to develop first-in-class cancer immunotherapy based in in-vivo reprogramming.