Cytonus Therapeutics, a small biotech company north of San Diego, raised $11.7 million in Series A financing to engineer cells as delivery vessels for genetic medicines, including mRNA therapies and oncolytic viruses for cancer, Endpoints News has learned.
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The unconventional approach flips the script on cell therapy. Rather than using the cell as a medicine itself, a partially-gutted cell transports a drug to a specified address in the body, thanks to molecular homing beacons appended to its surface.
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“In many ways, it behaves like a biological drone. It’s an entirely new category of drug delivery,” Cytonus co-founder and CEO Remo Moomiaie-Qajar said in an exclusive interview. “We are not a cell therapy company.”
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“Other approaches like nanoparticles, exosomes, even red blood cells, are all passive ways to deliver a product. They circulate in the bloodstream and are very inefficient at getting out and penetrating deep into tissues,” Moomiaie-Qajar said. “The Cargocyte is different. It’s an active transporter, better at homing and migration than anything else.”
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About Cytonus Therapeutics
Cytonus Therapeutics is a San Diego-based biotech company that has developed a vast platform of proprietary immunotherapeutic products to treat a wide range of medical conditions including cancers, infectious diseases, inflammatory diseases, and cognitive disorders, and to improve patient outcomes. Its proprietary Cargocyte™ technologies are next-generation biomolecular delivery devices which have numerous medical applications across unmet therapeutic areas.
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