NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Enpicom and Glycostem Therapeutics have received a research subsidy for an undisclosed amount from the Dutch MIT Zuid research and development subsidy scheme, an initiative that supports partnerships focused on industrial research and experimental development.
The partners plan to use the funds to develop technology to predict the outcome of an NK-cell-based immunotherapy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors for which there are no standard therapies. The project is valued at over half a million euros, the companis said.
Dutch bioinformatics software company Enpicom is building a business around ready-to-use software that supports target discovery and development in the immunotherapy space, with plans to expand into clinical applications such as patient stratification and treatment monitoring. Glycostem, a privately-held biotechnology company also based in the Netherlands, develops off-the-shelf allogeneic cellular immunotherapies using natural killer (NK) cells.
Under the terms of the current partnership, the collaborators intend to develop a data-driven therapy that provides an immune suppression regimen combined with allogeneic NK-cell therapy for treating multiple cancer types. They will also develop an integrated machine learning model that can predict smart treatment of immune suppression as well as the outcomes of subsequent NK-cell therapy.
Glycostem "adds specific immunotherapy knowledge to the project" while Enpicom will bring the necessary knowledge and expertise in bioinformatics and software engineering, Glycostem CSO Jan Spanholtz said in a statement. Enpicom CEO Jos Lunenberg noted in a statement that the partnership will enable his company "broaden the scope of immunotherapies that we can guide with our technology from T and B cell-based to NK-cell-based therapies."