Laverock Therapeutics Ltd has been founded to develop a gene silencing platform for the creation of programmable, allogeneic cell therapies.
Having recently completed a seed funding round, the U.K. company has opened dedicated labs in the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, employing six new team members on top of its senior management team.
Laverock Therapeutics started out in February as Skylark Therapeutics Ltd.
The company’s mission is to utilize gene editing induced gene silencing (GEiGS) technology, and its associated computational platform, to engineer induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived cell therapies with improved efficacy, safety, and accessibility.
Laverock Therapeutics said earlier this year, it demonstrated its technology, exclusively licensed from Tropic Biosciences, would translate from plants to humans. The company has now created GEiGS engineered iPSCs, which it said further de-risks its platform technology and lays the foundation for its approach.
‘Transforming the sector’
Experiments are under way to demonstrate cell type and condition specific programmability, generating data to support allogeneic programs in type 1 diabetes and solid tumor directed immune therapy.
CTO Tim Allsopp said: “As the promise of iPSC-derived therapies continues to grow, so does our understanding of the limitations of existing approaches. Our novel technology has the potential to transform the sector via the creation of programmable, allogeneic cell therapies.”
CEO David Venables added: “We are thrilled to bring together such an experienced and knowledgeable team of scientific innovators and business leaders to drive forward Laverock’s development. I’d like to thank all our initial investors and supporters who have helped us reach this stage and look forward to bringing you news of further exciting developments as Laverock progresses.”