+/-
See how it works

ImmTOR® and ImmTOR-IL™

Potential to transform the lives of patients with developmental therapies designed to overcome autoimmunity and immunogenicity by restoring natural immune system balance in vivo.

What are ImmTOR® and ImmTOR‑IL™?

Selecta Biosciences’ precision immune tolerance platform is designed to give rise to antigen-specific immune tolerance.

ImmTOR® and ImmTOR‑IL™ have the potential to mitigate unwanted immune responses to autoantigens, gene therapy vectors and therapeutic biologics.

The Science Behind ImmTOR® and ImmTOR-IL™

Leveraging the human immune system to generate precision immune tolerance in vivo

Unwanted immune responses can cause autoimmune disease, prevent the redosing of life saving gene therapy and compromise the efficacy and safety of biologic therapy.

Generating Antigen-Specific Immune Tolerance

  • The Challenge

    Immunogenicity is the ability of a substance or antigen, such as a foreign or potentially dangerous protein, to provoke an antigen-specific immune response.

    An antigen can also be an autoantigen – one that despite being a normal part of the body is the target of an immune response.

    The immune system responds to foreign or dangerous antigens to defend the body.

    However, in some cases the immune system can be directed against one of the body’s own proteins – or an autoantigen, which can result in autoimmune disease.

    Unwanted immunogenicity can also occur in response to therapeutics. For example, immunogenicity to life saving gene therapy vectors can often cause severe toxicities, and the formation of neutralizing antibodies that may prevent any needed redosing. Additionally, the formation of anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) to biologic therapy can neutralize therapeutic activity, alter their pharmacokinetics and biodistribution, or cause hypersensitivity reactions and potentially life-threatening events.

  • The Solution

    ImmTOR® combines nanoparticle technology with rapamycin to generate antigen-specific immune tolerance. ImmTOR-IL™ has the potential to amplify the power of ImmTOR® by combining with an engineered IL-2 molecule to not only induce, but also expand, antigen-specific Tregs.

    Our ImmTOR® platform is designed to induce antigen-specific immune tolerance by targeting rapamycin to immune cells using nanoparticle technology, which has been clinically proven as an effective delivery system. When administered to a patient, ImmTOR® nanoparticles are filtered out by the lymph nodes, spleen and liver, where they are taken up by antigen-presenting cells (APC), such as dendritic cells (DC), a type of APC which can trigger immunogenic as well as tolerogenic responses from T cells. ImmTOR® promotes the induction of tolerogenic DC which go on to activate antigen-specific regulatory T cells (Tregs) to inhibit the immune response to the antigen.

    Image

    When ImmTOR® is combined with a Treg selective IL-2 receptor agonist (ImmTOR-IL™), the two have been observed to work synergistically to increase the magnitude and durability of total antigen-specific Treg expansion.

    Image

  • The Opportunity

    ImmTOR®/ImmTOR-IL™ + Antigen = Precision Immune Tolerance.

    Selecta is leveraging this approach to generate precision immune tolerance to autoantigens that play a role in autoimmune disease, viral vectors used in gene therapy and other biologic therapy. 

Controlled, scalable manufacturing

The universal formulation of ImmTOR® is able to be produced at a commercial scale via a well-controlled and scalable manufacturing process.

Selecta has developed a commercial-scale, Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), process to ensure that ImmTOR® is consistently produced and controlled according to quality standards.

The tolerogenic activity of ImmTOR® has been reproduced in multiple independent laboratories using a range of biologic therapies and immunogenic antigens, indicating the platform’s ability to mitigate unwanted immune responses. Selecta’s research has been published in multiple high-level peer-reviewed journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Science Advances and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Partnerships

Join our growing group of partnerships to leverage the potential of ImmTOR® and further advance your therapy

Our ImmTOR® platform has exciting potential across a broad range of therapeutic areas. Learn more about our partnerships and partnering opportunities.

Learn More

Image

Building on the Success of SEL-212

Our ImmTOR® platform is being evaluated in an ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial.

With a Phase 3 clinical program in chronic refractory gout that has been strategically licensed to Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (Sobi), Selecta’s ImmTOR® platform is being developed to mitigate the immunogenicity of a fungal-derived enzyme. Additionally, ImmTOR® was observed to effectively mitigate formation of anti-AAV capsids in a Phase 1 safety trial. Selecta intends to build upon these early results by developing ImmTOR® to restore self-tolerance in autoimmune disease and in combination with gene therapy and other biologic therapy to create a pipeline of precision immune tolerance therapies.

Our Pipeline

Advancing a growing and diversified wholly owned and partnered pipeline

With our clinically validated ImmTOR® platform, we intend to advance new precision immune tolerance therapies through development. Dig deep into our pipeline of wholly owned and partnered ImmTOR®-driven therapies.

Pipeline Details