On February 17, 2021 Elicio Therapeutics, a private biotechnology company developing a pipeline of potent immunotherapies based on its proprietary lymph node targeting technology, reported the successful completion of Series B financing bringing the total funds raised in the current round to $73 million (Press release, Elicio Therapeutics, FEB 17, 2021, View Source [SID1234575182]). Elicio funding has been established from an international investor base, including multiple strategic and institutional investors
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Proceeds will advance Elicio’s lead program ELI-002 into clinical trials in early 2021 for mutated KRAS (mKRAS) driven cancers, estimated to be 25% of all human solid tumors. ELI-002 contains two powerful components: The company’s proprietary immune stimulating Amphiphile (AMP)-CpG, an adjuvant, and AMP mKRAS peptides which target a broad spectrum of KRAS mutations that drive 97% of all KRAS-driven cancers. Elicio’s therapeutic vaccine design creates a unique and potent broad-spectrum immunotherapy differentiated from small molecule mKRAS inhibitors in development that address single mutated KRAS isoforms.
Elicio’s AMP platform technology has created a robust set of valuable assets. The platform technology has been used to improve the activity of immunostimulatory agents, antigens, adjuvants, and cell-therapies that generate little to no response when used in the conventional forms. By precisely targeting these immunotherapies to the lymph nodes, Amphiphiles can unlock their full potential to generate and amplify anti-tumor immune responses as well as create potent prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases. ELicio has collaborations with top institutions such as MIT, National Cancer Institute, Moffitt Cancer Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, advancing the AMP platform, AMP cell therapies, therapeutic vaccines, prophylactic vaccines and adjuvants to the clinic and expect to expand our commercial partnership base.
"We have a talented management and research team in place, with an experienced and engaged board of directors and elite scientific advisors. Elicio is moving rapidly from a highly capital efficient technology platform to a multi-immunotherapy clinical-stage company with a deep pipeline of IND-ready and preclinically validated AMP candicates, each with unprecedented efficacy data." said Robert Connelly, Elicio’s CEO.
"We’ve demonstrated improvements in multiple tumor and infectious disease models that highlight how targeting immunogens and cell-therapy activators to lymph nodes amplifies antibody and especially T cell-mediated immune responses," said Christopher Haqq, M.D., Ph.D., Elicio’s Executive Vice President, Head of Research and Development, and Chief Medical Officer. "Amphiphile technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we treat cancers and infectious diseases."
About ELI-002
ELI-002 is an "AMP KRAS-vaccine" containing Amphiphile mKRAS peptides and a proprietary Amphiphile adjuvant, AMP CpG, administered subcutaneously. Elicio’s ELI-002 targets KRAS mutations, present in approximately 25% of all human solid tumors. The Amphiphile mKRAS peptides are targeted directly to the lymph node as a result of AMP-CpG binding to tissue albumin after injection, leading to the complex into lymph nodes where the AMP-CpG payload is delivered directly to key immune cells resulting in unprecedented efficiency. ELI-002 has the potential to become a multi-targeted mKRAS therapeutic vaccine with the ability to treat and prevent disease recurrence for hundreds of thousands of patients with mKRAS-driven cancers, including pancreatic, colorectal, lung, bile duct, endometrial, and ovarian. Elicio has demonstrated in multiple tumor models that improving the targeting of immunogens and cell-therapy activators to lymph nodes, where resident immune cells potently orchestrate immunity, can substantially amplify their ability to induce effective tumor-killing immune responses.