Cells make exosomes. Esphera SynBio modifies cells such that they make modified exosomes.
These modified exosomes can be designed to have targeting moieties on their surface and a variety of protein or RNA payloads in their lumen.
Cells can be modified to do so in vitro (i.e. in a bioreactor) or in vivo (i.e. following delivery of our transgenes by any vector).
our technology
Esphera designs transgenes encoding multimeric proteins that traffic into budding exosomes.
These multimeric proteins can include extravesicular targeting domains, luminal proteins (antigens, enzymes, adaptors etc) facilitating the packaging of various RNA species (siRNA, mRNA, saRNA).
This allows for the production of, for example, therapeutic exosomes in vivo.
Esphera’s lead application of this platform technology is the modification of tumour cells in vivo such that typically protumourigenic and immunosuppressive tumour-derived exosomes become immunostimulatory, antigen-bearing modifiers of the TME and bespoke, patient specific cancer vaccines.
Our team
Brian Lichty
Founder, CEO
Carolina Ilkow
Founder, CSO
John Bell
Founder, President
Trang Pham
Senior Scientist
Jake Nikota
Senior Scientist
Amy Patrick
Manager, In Vivo Operations
Investors
Esphera will be raising a Series A round in 2025, for more information contact us below. Current investors: GKCC LLC and FACIT.