Nextera AS (Oslo, Norway) announces a collaboration with Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) on joint development of next generation targeted tolerizing immunotherapy for the treatment of patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).
The collaboration will support a multi-year program aimed at developing and validating a next generation TCR-Like antibody guided drug leveraging Nextera`s unique NextCore platform combined with the world-leading preclinical and clinical capabilities and insights within RA residing at Karolinska Intitutet.
Current RA therapies induce broad immunosuppression showing varying efficacy, poor disease control and several side effects. The drug developed through the collaboration holds the potential to introduce a paradigm shift through novel TCR-Like antibodies that selectively target RA-associated autoantigens presented on HLA class II molecules with the aim of enabling durable disease-specific suppression of pathogenic T cells while preserving protective immunity.
Nextera’s aim is to engage into strategic partnerships focused on the huge unmet medical demand in autoimmunity and oncology by leveraging its NextCore platform. This partnership represents the second drug development program with TCR-Like antibodies in autoimmunity which will complement the company’s focus on TCR-Like antibodies in Celiac Disease1,2. The NextCore platform is highly scalable with the aim to expand in strategic partnerships within various autoimmune diseases.
“We are delighted to engage into this collaboration with Karolinska Institutet, which has been pioneering discoveries underpinning our current understanding of Rheumatoid Arthritis for decades. By levering their insights, preclinical and clinical capabilities in combination with Nexteras unique ability to make beyond state-of-the-art TCR-Like antibodies towards key autoimmune pHLA class II T cell targets, we believe we trigger an extraordinary synergy to provide a unique novel therapeutic approach with the potential to fill the unmet medical gap and improve lives of patient with Rheumatoid Arthritis” said Dr. Geir Åge Løset, co-founder and CEO/CSO of Nextera.
1) Plasma cells are the most abundant gluten peptide MHC-expressing cells in inflamed intestinal tissues from patients with celiac disease. Høydahl LS et al., Gastroenterology. 2019 156(5):1428-1439.e10. DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2018.12.013.
2) A high-affinity human TCR-like antibody detects celiac disease gluten peptide-MHC complexes and inhibits T cell activation. Frick R et al., Sci Immunol. 2021 6(62):eabg4925. DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.abg4925.