Technology
Science designed for safer, longer-lasting cell therapies.
Protect. Persist. Function
Our Technology
ImmunoShield’s scientific approach is built to address two of cell therapy’s biggest barriers: immune rejection and loss of function after implantation. Our science is aimed at helping therapeutic cells evade immune destruction and deliver lasting benefit in the body.
The Challenge: When the immune system becomes a barrier
The immune system is powerful, but it can stand in the way of cell therapy.
How to address the challenge
The immune system is designed to recognize and eliminate threats. But in autoimmune disease, that protective response can become misdirected and attack healthy cells and tissues.
Cell therapies offer the possibility of replacing cells that the body has lost or can no longer use. Yet implanted therapeutic cells can also be recognized as foreign and targeted by the immune system. Over time, this immune attack can reduce their survival, limit their function, and prevent patients from receiving the full benefit of treatment.
Specific to Type 1 Diabetes
In Type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells. Replacing those cells could restore the body’s ability to respond to blood glucose in real time, but only if the replacement cells can remain protected and functional after implantation.
Limits of Current Approaches
Broad immune suppression can come with major tradeoffs.
To protect transplanted cells, patients may need systemic immunosuppressive drugs that reduce immune activity throughout the body. While these medicines can help limit rejection, they may also increase vulnerability to infection, create long-term safety concerns, and restrict cell therapy to patients with the most severe disease.
ImmunoShield is pursuing a different goal: protect therapeutic cells while preserving the broader immune system’s ability to function normally.
- The goal is not to shut down the immune system. It is to guide immune activity with greater precision.
Our Platform
Protect, Persist, Function, Precision
A multi-layered approach to protecting living medicines.
ImmunoShield is developing complementary technologies designed to help implanted cells survive immune attack, remain functional over time, and continue responding to the body’s needs.
This platform is built around four connected objectives
1. Protect: Encapsulation technology
Therapeutic cells are placed within a permeable encapsulation device designed to create a physical and biological barrier between the cells and the patient’s immune system.
The device is engineered to allow essential exchange with the body. Nutrients and oxygen can reach the cells, while therapeutic molecules can move out in response to the patient’s needs. In Type 1 diabetes, that means insulin-producing cells may be able to sense glucose and release insulin in real time.
– Designed to help shield implanted cells from direct immune attack
2. Persist: Supporting long-term cell function
Cell therapies must do more than survive implantation. They must continue functioning in the body over time.
ImmunoShield’s encapsulation approach is designed to provide an environment that supports implanted cells as they integrate with the body. By improving the conditions around therapeutic cells, the platform aims to preserve their long-term viability and therapeutic activity.
3. Function: On-Demand Therapeutic Response
Living cells can respond dynamically to changes in the body. Unlike a fixed dose of a conventional drug, implanted therapeutic cells may be able to sense biological signals and deliver a response when it is needed.
For Type 1 diabetes, this could mean insulin-producing cells responding to changing glucose levels throughout the day
4. Precision: Better Immune Control
Immune-mediated diseases are biologically complex. A treatment that affects the entire immune system may provide benefit, but it can also create unnecessary disruption.
ImmunoShield’s science is designed to work with the biology of disease by focusing on the immune signals that matter most, where they matter, and when intervention is needed.
Our goal is to develop therapies that are not only biologically innovative, but also practical, durable, and meaningful for patients.
Beyond Encapsulation: Targeted Immune Tolerance
Helping the immune system recognize what should be protected.
Encapsulation can provide an important first layer of protection, but no physical barrier is expected to eliminate every source of immune rejection. ImmunoShield is therefore pursuing complementary approaches intended to reduce the immune response directed at implanted therapeutic cells.
Rather than relying on systemic immunosuppression, the company is working toward a more selective strategy: helping retrain the immune system so it does not react against the implanted cells while maintaining its ability to protect the patient from infection and other threats.
Targeted immune control, not blanket immune suppression.
Initial Focus: Type 1 Diabetes
Advancing a new approach for Type 1 diabetes.
ImmunoShield’s initial development focus is Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which insulin-producing beta cells are destroyed by the immune system.
The company is developing its platform to support implanted insulin-producing cells that can respond to glucose levels and release insulin on demand. By combining cell encapsulation with targeted immune tolerance strategies, ImmunoShield aims to address both the loss of beta cells and the immune response that caused their destruction.
The long-term goal is to help create a future in which insulin-producing cell therapies can provide durable benefit without requiring chronic systemic immunosuppression.