Surface engineering of exosomes for improved tissue-targeting published by Evox co-founder
Oxford, UK, May 20, 2024 – Evox Therapeutics Ltd (‘Evox’), a leading exosome therapeutics company, today announced the peer reviewed publication of Evox-funded research in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a high-impact journal. In this paper, entitled “Targeted Therapy by Antibody Displaying Extracellular Vesicles”, Wiklander et al demonstrated the ability of targeted exosomes to significantly improve the delivery of therapeutic payloads.
In the publication, the authors utilise the ability of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as a delivery vector and equip their surface with an antibody binding moiety specific for the Fc domain. These Fc-binding EVs (Fc-EVs) can be decorated with different types of IgG antibodies and can thus be targeted to virtually any tissue of interest. Using cancer therapy as a model system, the researchers demonstrated highly efficient targeting of EVs to cancer cells, including HER2 and PD-L1 positive cells. As proof of concept, Fc-EVs displaying PD-L1 antibody demonstrated ~40-fold improved accumulation in tumour tissue following systemic administration and, when loaded with doxorubicin, led to a significantly lower tumour burden and a pronounced increased survival of tumour-bearing mice. This research, carried out in collaboration between Evox and the group of Evox Co-Founder Professor Samir El Andaloussi, further highlights the potential effectiveness and utility of the Company’s ExoEdit™ platform. The paper can be accessed at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-024-01214-6.
“This research demonstrates how our Fc-EV technology has broad utility as a pre-clinical screening tool for identifying optimal ligand-receptor pairs when developing targeted exosomes as therapeutics,” said Dr. Dave Carter, Head of Research of Evox. “Targeted delivery of many genetic medicines, such as genome editors, will be increasingly important so as to avoid unwanted off-target effects and our exosome platform technology offers a unique solution in this regard.”
About Evox Therapeutics
Evox Therapeutics is a privately held, Oxford-based biotechnology company that is a leader in harnessing and engineering the natural delivery capabilities of exosomes to create and enable the next generation of genetic medicines. Evox uses its ExoEdit™ platform to engineer exosomes to facilitate safe and precise drug delivery to hard-to-reach organs and tissues. The Company holds an unrivalled intellectual property estate across non-viral genetic medicines and is backed by leading life sciences venture capital groups, including Oxford Science Enterprises, Redmile, OrbiMed and GV.
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