IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GlyTR Therapeutics, Inc. is pleased to announce it has been awarded an approximately $300,000 grant from The National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of Health (NIH) thru the Small Business Technology Transfer Program. This grant award comes on the heels of a $3.4 million grant on its Glycan dependent T cell Recruiter (GlyTR – pronounced ‘glitter’) technology received in September from the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative at NCI. The new funding will support the company’s development of highly novel cancer immunotherapies that trigger the body’s own immune system to kill cancer.
Cancer Immunotherapy is an area of intense development and investment. However, expansion of targeted immunotherapies such as bi-specific proteins and engineered Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells to the majority of common cancer types is greatly limited by a lack of protein antigens that can be safely targeted. In addition, different therapeutics are required for different cancers, greatly increasing time and cost of development. GlyTR technology addresses both of these issue by targeting ‘Tumor Associated Carbohydrate Antigens’, the most abundant and widely expressed cell surface cancer antigens known to have limited or no expression in normal tissue.
“The funding of these two grants provides scientific validation of GlyTR technology and its potential to greatly broaden cancer immunotherapy to the vast majority common cancers,” says Bob Genthert, an EvoNexus mentor-in-residence and GlyTR Therapeutics’ board member and investor. “This is testament to the herculean efforts that Professor Michael Demetriou MD, Ph.D. and post-doctoral fellow, Raymond Zhou, Ph.D. have put into the discovery of GlyTR technology at the University of California, Irvine.”
To complement the new funding, GlyTR Therapeutics is seeking investors to participate in a Series A financing round to fund the regulatory and commercialization process. The company is also seeking a CEO with proven cancer immunotherapy drug development experience.
GlyTR Therapeutics is based on research derived from UC Irvine’s Research Labs. Professor Michael Demetriou and co-inventor Dr. Raymond Zhou are the inventors and founders of GlyTR Therapeutics. UC Irvine has strongly supported the development of GlyTR through pilot awards from the UC Irvine Center for Applied Innovation and the UCI Anti-Cancer Challenge Research Fund. Dr Zhou has been supported by a fellowship from the UCI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. GlyTR Therapeutics has been working out of EvoNexus, a non-profit incubator located adjacent to the UC Irvine campus.
About GlyTR
Based in Irvine, Calif., GlyTR Therapeutics is developing a novel immunotherapy platform technology that uniquely targets highly diverse cancer types, ranging from breast cancer to leukemia. GlyTR technology can overcome many of the shortcomings of current immunotherapies by binding to never-before targeted tumors associated carbohydrate antigens (targets) that are common to many cancer types.
For scientific information, contact: mike.demetriou@glytrtherapeutics.com and for investor information and/or the CEO opportunity, contact: bob.genthert@glytrtherapeutics.com.