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.”