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626 Bancroft Way, 3C
Berkeley, CA 94710-2224 USA
phone:510-848-4400
fax:510-848-5614
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Private |
| Founded |
2002 |
| Employees |
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| www.adurobiotech.com
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| Research Sector |
Biotech Specialty Pharma |
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| Summary Description |
| Non-invasive targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancers. |
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| Management |
| Stephen T. Isaacs is Chairman and CEO of Aduro. Prior to Aduro, Mr. Isaacs was founder, President and CEO of Cerus Corporation (NASD:CERS), and grew Cerus from three employees to over two hundred and fifty, took Cerus public and developed two marketed products.
Prior to Cerus, Mr. Isaacs held a non-teaching faculty position at the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, where he published over 20 articles and 40 patents. Mr. Isaacs holds a BA degree in Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.
Seth David Model is acting CFO of Aduro. He came to Aduro from Triton BioSystems, one of the two companies that merged to form Aduro in 2008, where he was also CFO and a founder of the company. Mr. Model?s prior experience includes ImageMax, Inc., (now DataBank IMX), where he was a founder and President, and part of the group that took ImageMax public in 1997. Prior to that, Mr. Model co-managed Airfoil Technologies, LLC, a joint venture between Teleflex and General Electric to provide the world's commercial airlines with turbine repair services. (General Electric acquired 100% of the venture in 2009.)
Mr. Model began his career as a mechanical engineer with Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, designing engine components and later running development and test programs. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Yale University.
Dirk G. Brockstedt is Vice President of Research and Development, and has more than 15 years of experience in the fields of immunology and oncology originating with his PhD from Stanford University. He was the third employee in the original Vaccine group at Cerus Corporation and later brought the technology to Aduro. He was instrumental in the development of both the live-attenuated and killed Listeria strains, and he led the development of the lead product, CRS-207. Prior to Cerus Corporation, Dr. Brockstedt spent 4 years at Aventis in the Immunotherapy and Anti-Angiogenesis group developing novel therapies against cancer. Dr. Brockstedt is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific articles and is a named inventor on 5 issued patents and several patent applications.
Aimee Murphy is the Director of Clinical Operations. She has more than 12 years of experience in all phases of clinical research and trial management, with a focus on therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases. While at Cerus Corporation and Anza Therapeutics, she managed the first Phase 1 studies for what are now Aduro's therapeutic vaccines. Prior to working with Aduro?s platform, she worked at VaxGen for 6 years on the world's first Phase 3 prophylactic vaccine trials for HIV-1 as well as vaccine trials for anthrax and smallpox. Prior to working in clinical development, Ms. Murphy worked in Quality Assurance at Bayer Pharmaceuticals. She holds a BS in Biology from Pepperdine University. |
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| Keywords |
| cancer, breast, head, neck, lung, colon, ovarian, pancreatic, Urology, prostate, urinary, bladder, erectile, tumor, antibody, magnetic field energy, non-materials, Oncology |
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| Description |
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After completing extensive research in immunotherapy, Listeria monocytogenes was chosen, which has been used as a research tool for more than 50 years because of its ability to induce potent cellular immunity. Listeria is a common environmental pathogen, which makes its use as a vaccine somewhat counter-intuitive, but the Aduro research team engineered two distinct strains to be safe for use in humans while continuing to induce robust immune responses. These advances have been published in 20 major studies and have generated more than $20 million in grant funding.
Listeria’s unique combination of attributes makes it an ideal platform for prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. It effectively stimulates two forms of immunity (innate and adaptive); it can be administered repeatedly without losing potency; it can increase the potency of other vaccines and treatments when used in combination; and it can be manufactured at relatively low cost.
Aduro's therapeutic vaccines have already been tested in three Phase 1 clinical safety trials in cancer and infectious disease with a total of 30 patients, and Aduro is currently planning Phase 2A and Phase 1B cancer trials with its lead therapeutic, CRS-207.
In addition to building its own proprietary pipeline, Aduro is actively seeking partnerships and contract research agreements to develop new vaccines and to boost the efficacies of other vaccines and treatments. Aduro can engineer a new vaccine strain and have it ready for clinical testing within 12 months. |
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| Products / Services |
Listeria
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| Technology / Differentiation |
| For more than 50 years, immunologists have used Listeria as a research tool to study the mammalian immune system. Now Aduro BioTech is engineering Listeria to treat cancer and infectious diseases.
There are several properties that make Listeria ideally suited as a platform for engineering active specific immunotherapies.
Safety: Using Listeria as the basis for a vaccine may seem counter-intuitive, but the safety is well established. The FDA has already approved three bacteria-based vaccines, including vaccines based on cholera and salmonella, that are safe for use in healthy individuals. These bacteria were attenuated (made safe) with old-fashioned selection and/or genetic engineering methods, whereas Aduro used 21st century technology to create defined and stable mutations in Listeria to ensure attenuation and safety (see Product Platforms for more detail).
Stimulation of innate immunity: Listeria signals through multiple pathways to the innate immune system, activating cell surface Toll-like receptors and intracellular Nod-like receptors. The ability to stimulate intracellular receptors is critical to Listeria?s activity and leads to potent expression of interferons and other cytokines that play a role in fighting infections and cancer.
Delivery of antigens and stimulation of T cells: Listeria is initially taken up into a specialized cellular compartment called a vacuole. Listeria then expresses a protein called listeriolysin O (LLO) that allows it to escape from the vacuole and multiply inside the cell. It is in the cytosol that Listeria expresses and secretes antigens. These antigens are processed by the host cellular machinery and presented on the cell?s surface to the immune system. T cells recognize presented antigens and are activated in the context of the inflammatory danger signal induced by Listeria. This ability to express and present antigens to T cells in the appropriate host cell compartment enhances the efficacy of Listeria-based vaccines and therapeutics, and distinguishes Listeria from other microbial vector systems.
Ability to repeatedly administer: Most microbial vectors, including Listeria, induce an antibody response after administration to a patient. Antibodies against a viral vector can neutralize it, blocking its ability to subsequently enter cells and express its antigenic payload. This is a fundamental limitation since virtually all vaccine and active immunotherapy strategies require multiple immunizations (so-called prime-boost regimens) in order to effectively stimulate immune responses. In contrast, Listeria is not neutralized, even by high levels of antibody. This makes it suitable for developing repeat-dose regimens in the setting of chronic infections and cancer.
Exceptionally potent at increasing the efficacy of other vaccines/treatments when combined. As explained above, virtually all vaccine and active immunotherapy strategies require multiple immunizations. Traditionally the same vaccines are given repeatedly as a prime followed by homologous boosts. But new research suggests prime-boost with different types of vaccines containing the same antigens can be more immunogenic. Listeria is especially effective at heterologous prime-boost, which creates unique opportunities to make other vaccines and treatments more effective.
Simplicity of engineering and manufacturing: The process of engineering antigens into Listeria, and thus making disease-specific treatments and vaccines, utilizes molecular techniques that have been developed for bacteria over the last 30 years. Aduro has refined these molecular tools with proprietary methods to enable precise integration of antigens at well-characterized locations on the Listeria chromosome. Antigens are expressed and secreted at robust levels to stimulate potent T cell responses. Manufacturing and purifying engineered Listeria utilizes cost-effective, standard methods of fermentation and separation. Scale-up is predictable, current production takes 16 hours start-to-finish, and yields are in excess of 90%. This simplicity eliminates major sources of risk and cost in the process of developing a biologic therapy. |
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| Funding |
| April 20, 2011
Aduro BioTech completes $19.25 million Series B financing. |
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| Status |
| April 18, 2011
Aduro BioTech licenses GVAX Pancreas from BioSante Pharmaceuticals.
December 7, 2010
Aduro BioTech announces first presentation of clinical results from CRS-207 Phase 1 trial.
November 29, 2010
Aduro BioTech receives "Outstanding Scientific Achievement" award for biodefense program.
November 3, 2010
Aduro BioTech awarded $442,000 under U.S. Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Program. |
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