Selecta Biosciences, Inc.,a clinical stage biotechnology company developing a novel class of targeted antigen-specific immune therapies, today provided an update on the company’s product development pipeline, revealing its focus on immune tolerance applications of its proprietary Synthetic Vaccine Particle (SVP) platform. The company announced a new product candidate for its pipeline of tolerogenic immunotherapies: SEL-212 will be the first non-immunogenic treatment for refractory and tophaceous gout. Selecta is now developing products for three applications of antigen-specific tolerance, the inhibition of immunogenicity for biologic therapies, treatment of allergies, and treatment of autoimmune diseases. While the company is focused to accelerate product opportunities in immune tolerance in the near-term, Selecta continues to advance its key SVP immune activation programs, with a grant of $1.25 million from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for malaria vaccines and an award of $8.1 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for Selecta’s nicotine vaccine for smoking cessation and relapse prevention.
“Our SVP platform is highly versatile, providing us with the opportunity to develop breakthrough products for immune tolerance and differentiated vaccines to prevent and treat disease,” said Werner Cautreels, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Selecta. “We are rapidly advancing our first-in-class tolerogenic products to the clinic. Grants and partnerships enable us to develop more effective vaccines in parallel.”