Laverock Therapeutics has been awarded two new grants totalling in excess of £2.2m to support the next generation of its gene-control platform development and expansion into additional non-oncology therapeutics areas.
The biotech is developing disease-responsive advanced therapies through its programmable gene control technology.
To date, Laverock’s gene-control platform has been demonstrated across therapeutic applications and cell types, including developing programmed T-cells and macrophages for solid tumour indications, and hypoimmunogenic pancreatic islet cells for Type-1 diabetes.
The first grant-funded project will focus on scaling the company’s platform within a T-cell product context, utilising solid tumour-based patient datasets and foundational data around both intracellular signalling and antigen expression.
Laverock will be able to identify the preferred combination of product features to unlock efficacy and safety in solid tumour cancer indications tailored to tumour type, and use patient derived models for rapid prototyping and evaluation.
The second grant will enable the expansion of Laverock’s macrophage-based programmes into non-oncology indications, building upon the platform’s ability to program myeloid cell phenotypes and precisely control the expression of therapeutically relevant payloads.
“Success in these two highly competitive grant competitions provides further validation of our approach and will enable us to expand our efforts across platform and product development,” says David Venables, CEO at Laverock Therapeutics.
“As we push towards the clinic for our lead programme this additional funding will help unlock the true breadth of what our technology can achieve. We can’t wait to get started.”
