Company Focused on Fully Human Antibodies, Vaccines and Blood Stem Cell Technologies
AURORA, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Taiga Biotechnologies, Inc. today announced that the company has received three new Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health, totaling $1.7 million. This adds to the two previous grants awarded to Taiga for various applications of its proprietary technology platforms, for a total in NIH funding to date of over $2.1 million.
“The ability to generate fully human antibodies to difficult targets will provide an important source of novel therapeutic candidates. This novel approach will enable us to deliberately make high affinity antibodies to self-proteins as well as regions within proteins that previously have been off-limits to the immune system”
“We are very pleased to gain this additional non-dilutive funding. With these new SBIR grants, Taiga has now received peer-reviewed validation across all four of its primary technology platforms: therapeutic antibodies against difficult protein targets, an immune response enhancer for vaccines to infectious diseases and cancer, universal donor blood stem cells, and blood cell expansion technology,” said Brian Turner, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer.
Specifically, the SBIR grants include:
Taiga’s key platform technologies related to a novel approach for developing fully human monoclonal antibodies to difficult protein antigens, as well as a novel means to conditionally immortalize human blood stem cells, were developed in the laboratory of Yosef Refaeli, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and National Jewish Medical and Research Center. Those institutions have exclusively licensed the technology to Taiga Biotechnologies, and Dr. Refaeli serves as the Chairman of Taiga’s Scientific Advisory Board. These two technology platforms are critical for the development of novel monoclonal antibodies for difficult protein antigens and a universal donor blood stem cell line, as well as the blood pharming applications that will be further developed under the aegis of the SBIR grants.
“The ability to generate fully human antibodies to difficult targets will provide an important source of novel therapeutic candidates. This novel approach will enable us to deliberately make high affinity antibodies to self-proteins as well as regions within proteins that previously have been off-limits to the immune system,” said Dr. Refaeli.
Brian Turner, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer of Taiga Biotechnologies, the principal investigator on Taiga’s Phase II grant, further commented, “The ability to transplant any patient who could benefit from a blood stem cell transplant will be important not only for HIV infected patients, but may also change the standard of care for hematologic cancers, autoimmune disease, and other diseases with the potential to be cured by blood cell transplantation. The generation of an HIV-1 resistant blood stem cell line that can be used for transplantation in the clinic, regardless of genetic matching, will revolutionize the clinical use of bone marrow transplantation by enabling many more patients to access this procedure than is possible with current technologies.”
Taiga Biotechnologies itself developed the technology behind the immune enhancer, and it is the company’s first in-house technology to be peer reviewed and funded by the federal government.
About Taiga Biotechnologies, Inc.
Taiga Biotechnologies, Inc. is a biotech company based in Aurora, CO. The company’s mission is to develop novel approaches to complex diseases, including cancers, immunodeficiencies and infectious agents such as HIV and influenza.
Taiga Biotechnologies is currently developing four core programs, all enabled by the company’s proprietary stem cell technologies:
For more information on the company, please visit our web site at http://www.taigabiotech.com.
