Company founded by IGP researchers receive support for innovation project
The Swedish innovation agency Vinnova has decided to grant SEK five million to a project that will develop manufacturing processes in cell therapy against cancer. The project is led by the company Elicera Therapeutics, founded by IGP researchers Di Yu and Magnus Essand.
During the autumn 2021, Vinnova opened a call for applications for innovation projects that aim to contribute to new biological drugs becoming available for healthcare. Nine projects have now been granted funding for three years.
The project led by Elicera Therapeutics aims to simplify processes for the development of cell therapy using CAR-T cells. They will develop a fully automated manufacturing process which will simplify the current labour consuming manufacturing process that includes blood harvesting, T cell isolation, and engineering and expansion of CAR-T cells. The goal is to make CAR-T cell therapies more accessible to cancer patients.
“This is a great start of 2022,” says Di Yu. “With Vinnova’s support, we will take one step forward to bring our research from bench to the bedside. We hope that with our proposed method, more patients can benefit from the new treatment modality – CAR-T cell therapy.”
The project includes collaborators at Uppsala University, Uppsala University Hospital, Karolinska Institutet and the KI infrastructure Vecura.
More information:
Vinnova
Di Yu’s and Magnus Essand’s research (Link removed)
Press release, Elicera Therapeutics