Our Business
We are a biotechnology company committed to developing advanced allogeneic cell and gene therapies to promote stronger immune system responses potentially for long-term or life-long cancer remission in some of the deadliest cancers, and potentially to treat or cure serious infectious diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
Our Product Development strategy is anchored in the use of “non-self” or allogeneic cells that enhance the immune response that we seek to elicit.
Over the past several years, Renovaro has evolved from a company with a single product candidate as a potential cure for HIV, adding two additional pipeline candidates for HIV, a pipeline for HBV, and with a significant expansion into cancer immune therapies to address high unmet needs from difficult-to- treat solid tumors.
The oncology platform is now at the forefront of our development activities, beginning with pancreatic cancer.
THERAPEUTIC APPROACH
Renovaro’s general approach with gene- and/or cell-therapy is to enhance the immune system to allow a person to better fight diseases. Our vision is for a world free from toxic chemotherapy and healthy longevity for those with cancer and other diseases. Renovaro is leveraging general principles and advances in the knowledge of the immune response to engineer cells with enhanced attributes to promote the recognition and elimination of diseased cells.
ADVANCED ALLOGENEIC CELL THERAPY
The strategic benefit of cell therapy platforms is to potentially allow for manufacture of large, “off-the-shelf” banks of therapeutic cells that could be accessed on demand by health care professionals to potentially decrease the time between diagnosis and treatment.
In addition, because we focus on cells from donors, the strategy could potentially enhance the ability of the therapeutic candidates to induce a more robust response once injected into patients. The human immune system is designed to recognize and distinguish “self” from “non-self” and destroy “otherness” such as bacteria, viruses, and damaged or diseased cells such as cancer cells. Alloreactivity (reacting against another person’s cells) is the most powerful response the immune system generates.
Several of our technologies take advantage of the alloreactivity to hyper stimulate a person’s immune response to better attack a chronic infection (e.g., HIV) or solid tumor. In certain proposed treatments in development (e.g., HIV and cancer), cells taken from healthy donors are sometimes genetically modified to introduce signaling molecules that are designed to enhance the ability of specific immune cells to recognize diseased cells, and to help recruit other cells that will destroy cancer or virus infected cells.
Renovaro believes that the combination of off-the-shelf allogeneic cells, combined with genetic modifications designed to enhance immune signaling, could potentially generate therapeutic candidates that have unique attributes that will increase the likelihood of success.
CELL THERAPY ENABLING TECHNOLOGY
In addition to the platform described above, Renovaro has an innovative gene therapy approach to enhance the selection and engraftment (uptake) of cells carrying therapeutic attributes. Enhanced uptake or engraftment could play a critical role in some cases to increase the likelihood of therapeutic benefit. This technology was initially developed for autologous cell therapy from a person living with HIV, and genetically modifying those cells so they cannot be infected with most variants of HIV, plus a gene modification to enhance uptake. We have sublicensed under a profit-sharing agreement our technology to potentially increase engraftment for potential use in CAR-T therapy as a potential cure for HIV.
HBV GENE THERAPY
Renovaro is exploring various approaches for gene therapy design elements to potentially eliminate virus-infected cells with an innovative molecular mechanism that co-opts the virus’ machinery to induce the death of infected cells rather than reproducing and causing more infection and exacerbate disease.