Company Profile:
Immusoft
Immusoft is a Seattle, Wash.-based biotech start-up developing a breakthrough technology for delivering targeted medicines by programming a patient’s own cells to become miniature drug factories. It has received grants from the National Institutes of Health and Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs as well as support from private investors. The company’s technology platform will enable new treatments by solving delivery limitations and production challenges. It can program cells to continually produce and secrete therapeutic proteins and rare antibodies that have been impossible to elicit with a vaccine. This makes possible treatments that are otherwise impractical due to short half- life, injection site reactions, production challenges or small market size. It offers benefits of traditional approaches and modern gene therapies with less risk and greater control. It could replace a lifetime of infusions with a patient’s own drug-producing cells. Immusoft is working with prominent experimental HIV medicine scientists at the University of California, San Francisco to conduct human trials and collaborating with leading biopharmaceutical companies to advance rare disease treatments. Next it will scale up to clinical-grade production with collaborators at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center with the goal of receiving approval from the FDA to begin human clinical trials.
Q: Please tell us how your business idea was conceived. Was there an "aha" moment or did it evolve gradually?
A: The Immusoft story began with an “aha” moment when I realized that the human body is driven more by information than chemistry. It intrigued me that when a person is vaccinated against a pathogen, a disease that was once lethal doesn’t even cause the sniffles.
A vaccine doesn’t change anything fundamental about the nature of the immune system or the attacking pathogen. Rather, it allows the body to learn new information. Being a computer scientist, I wondered where the body stored this information and how to change it.
The ideas for Immusoft’s core technology then evolved when I concluded we could modify a system developed by Nobel Laureate David Baltimore and use it to program immune cells to secrete therapeutic proteins.
Immusoft’s technology directly programs the body by manipulating the information in immune cells.
A vaccine doesn’t change anything fundamental about the nature of the immune system or the attacking pathogen. Rather, it allows the body to learn new information. Being a computer scientist, I wondered where the body stored this information and how to change it.
The ideas for Immusoft’s core technology then evolved when I concluded we could modify a system developed by Nobel Laureate David Baltimore and use it to program immune cells to secrete therapeutic proteins.
Immusoft’s technology directly programs the body by manipulating the information in immune cells.
Q: What's the most inventive, innovative, or disruptive aspect of your initiative?
A: Our motto is, “We turn patients’ cells into drug factories.” This means giving people the ability to treat diseases using their own, programmed cells. It is an entirely novel way to treat diseases. The technology we developed that makes it possible, Immune System Programming, is extremely disruptive to established protocols.
Many of today’s most advanced treatments, biologics in particular, must be injected and can be very expensive (up to $400,000 per patient annually). Some potential treatments never become drugs because they’re impractical, have to be injected too frequently, or the challenge of producing at scale is insurmountable. Still other diseases are too rare to economically support the creation of an industrial process to produce treatments.
Immusoft’s technology will make many treatments possible that are too cumbersome or costly to pursue today. It has the promise of eliminating the need for many types of externally produced and injected biologics.
Many of today’s most advanced treatments, biologics in particular, must be injected and can be very expensive (up to $400,000 per patient annually). Some potential treatments never become drugs because they’re impractical, have to be injected too frequently, or the challenge of producing at scale is insurmountable. Still other diseases are too rare to economically support the creation of an industrial process to produce treatments.
Immusoft’s technology will make many treatments possible that are too cumbersome or costly to pursue today. It has the promise of eliminating the need for many types of externally produced and injected biologics.
Q: How will it help people live to their greatest potential or contribute to making the world healthier?
A: Immusoft’s technology has the potential to revolutionize how the world looks at medicine. For patients with the diseases our technology can be used for, it will be life-changing and life-giving. We will first use our technology to treat three indications: MPS I (a rare genetic disease), HIV, and cardiovascular disease.
Cells programmed with our technology will make many current treatments a thing of the past. Children suffering from MPS I will no longer need costly weekly treatments that only extend their life by a few years. Many suffering from HIV will no longer have to rely on antiretroviral drugs and treatments. And some kinds of cardiovascular disease will become extinct.
We anticipate and hope that patients with those diseases will be just the first in a long line of people suffering from many different types of illnesses whose lives will be made better and healthier by Immusoft’s work.
Cells programmed with our technology will make many current treatments a thing of the past. Children suffering from MPS I will no longer need costly weekly treatments that only extend their life by a few years. Many suffering from HIV will no longer have to rely on antiretroviral drugs and treatments. And some kinds of cardiovascular disease will become extinct.
We anticipate and hope that patients with those diseases will be just the first in a long line of people suffering from many different types of illnesses whose lives will be made better and healthier by Immusoft’s work.
Q: Five years from now, what would you like to be able to say has been your most important contribution to health?
A: We hope to revolutionize the way the world looks at medicine. We anticipate that we’ll be in clinic two years from today, proving the effectiveness of our treatments in humans. Within three years after that, we hope to be treating several types of diseases and to have fully automated our system. This will make our treatment cheaper and faster to produce, and feasible for many more applications.
Envision a stand-alone device capable of modifying a patient’s cells to manufacture biologic-based therapies for a wide range of diseases. Programming a patient’s cells to manufacture their own treatments could dramatically reduce therapy costs. Our core technology could put currently inaccessible treatments within reach of the developing world. Also possible will be life-extending regenerative treatments.
Immusoft’s Immune System Programming platform will represent a new frontier of human biomedicine.
Envision a stand-alone device capable of modifying a patient’s cells to manufacture biologic-based therapies for a wide range of diseases. Programming a patient’s cells to manufacture their own treatments could dramatically reduce therapy costs. Our core technology could put currently inaccessible treatments within reach of the developing world. Also possible will be life-extending regenerative treatments.
Immusoft’s Immune System Programming platform will represent a new frontier of human biomedicine.
Q: What single word or phrase best describes the culture of your startup and why?
A: Perspective. I believe some of the greatest advances in science happen when disciplines and perspectives mix. Most of the pieces of our technology existed before I came along. But I wasn’t from the field of biology, so I saw the problem and the human body differently – as a machine driven more by information than chemistry.
Our team consists of specialists with different perspectives. Everyone is forced to make rigorous cases for every idea and not fall back on how it has always been done in their lab. This mix helps us see what others have not, things that were right in front of them, for example.
We extend this cultural trait beyond our walls. Sure, we want to be the undisputed world leaders in our technology. But we expect others with different perspectives to use it in ways we haven’t anticipated.
Our team consists of specialists with different perspectives. Everyone is forced to make rigorous cases for every idea and not fall back on how it has always been done in their lab. This mix helps us see what others have not, things that were right in front of them, for example.
We extend this cultural trait beyond our walls. Sure, we want to be the undisputed world leaders in our technology. But we expect others with different perspectives to use it in ways we haven’t anticipated.