Many of today’s life-saving therapies are based on biologics or protein therapies, including gene therapy. However, these therapies lead to an immune response that, over time, limits their efficacy.

The immune system begins to see these biologics as foreign and produces neutralizing antibodies against them, removing them from the body reducing their therapeutic effect. Clinicians currently rely on immune suppressants to offset this effect, but existing immune suppressant therapies come at the cost of severe, often life-threatening, side-effects.

COUR’s breakthrough nanoparticle platform solves the problem of neutralizing antibodies by harnessing the immune system’s own learning power to induce the immune system to build tolerance to biologic and gene therapy treatments.

Upon infusion, COUR nanoparticles carrying the antigens associated with biologics and gene therapies bind to immune cells called monocytes.

The particles surface is functionalized to enhance uptake, ensuring optimal targeted delivery. These cells then travel to the spleen and liver, where they undergo apoptosis. There, the antigens encapsulated within the particles are released. The resulting debris is consumed by antigen presenting cells, which present the disease-specific antigens along with negative co-stimulating factors to the adaptive immune system. The adaptive immune system then recognizes the biologics and gene therapies as ‘self’, and shuts down the neutralizing antibody pathways. Once tolerance to biologics and gene therapies has been restored, they can be administered to patients safely and repeatedly without inducing neutralizing antibodies that interfere with their efficacy.

By harnessing the immune system’s built-in learning and regulatory pathways, COUR nanoparticle technology can reprogram the immune system– providing clinicians with a safe, effective, and non-immune suppressive approach to overcome challenges posed by neutralizing antibodies to biologics and gene therapies.