Elicera Therapeutics

The publication entitled "Complementarity-determining region clustering may cause CAR-T cell dysfunction" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-40303-z) describes the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), that ELC-401 uses to bind to the target IL13Ra2 and which Elicera plans on using to treat the brain tumor form glioblastoma. Brain cancer is notoriously difficult to treat and poses certain challenges, such as a hostile tumor microenvironment and antigen heterogeneity that the company believes its iTANK-platform can help meet through is bystander immune activating properties.

Furthermore, the article shows the importance of thoroughly screening the CAR molecules that are produced in order to be able to manufacture functional CAR T-cells with the ability to persist and kill tumor cells over longer periods of time. This is of utmost importance to prevent relapse after CAR T-treatment.

"We are very pleased that we were able to publish the work in Nature Communications, which is a highly respected and broad journal that reaches out to the entire scientific community," says Professor Magnus Essand, Chief Scientific Officer at Elicera.