Carnegie Mellon University recently licensed a proprietary platform for bioengineering exosomes used in drug delivery to Coya Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company.
Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that can be shed by cells and can hold proteins, lipids, metabolites, and nucleic acids.
Researchers are working to harness the exosome as a drug delivery vehicle, but not all attempts have been successful. Coya Therapeutics plans to develop exosome-polymer hybrids (EPHs) to enable exosomes to be homed to specific proteins.
Under the agreement, Coya optioned exclusive worldwide rights to research, develop, manufacture, and commercialize EPHs developed by CMU’s interdisciplinary team of chemists and engineers.
“This collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University further solidifies Coya’s thought leadership in the global exosome therapeutics field, adding new and exciting technologies to our unique Treg-derived exosomes platform,” Howard Berman, Coya Therapeutics CEO, said. “Nanoengineering exosomes with such manufacturing efficiency to produce EPHs that can be customized to any surface protein, delivering growth factors or drugs, while enhancing cellular uptake and bioactivity is the future of targeted therapies.”
CMU researchers have created a method that engineers exosomes using a DNA-cholesterol tether. The synthetic single-stranded DNA on the tether binds with a complementary strand of DNA linked to a bioactive agent.