Project description
A Trojan horse rolls into tumour cells, inciting treason
Cancer immunotherapies use the body's own immune system to help fight cancer. Despite tremendous strides and significant resources dedicated to developing novel immunotherapies, currently available treatments are highly effective in only a small proportion of patients. Cancer is a large family of diseases with a complicated diversity of causes and characteristics, significantly increasing the difficulty of achieving personalised and effective treatment. The Swedish start-up Asgard Therapeutics, coordinating the EU-funded TrojanDC project, has developed a Trojan horse to enter tumours and incite revolution, causing cancer cells to become traitors to their kind. Intra-tumoural injection of the TrojanDC gene therapy makes cancer cells become antigen-presenting dendritic cells, bypassing cancer evasion mechanisms in an off-the-shelf, completely personalised therapy system. It could be a silver bullet for any tumour.
Objective
Asgard Therapeutics, a Swedish start-up company, was founded based on a unique proprietary in vivo cell reprogramming technology. This paradigm-shifting gene therapy has the unique potential to overhaul the cancer immunotherapy market.
Our gene therapy, named TrojanDC, delivers immune-genes into the tumor and re-educates cancer cells to become anti-tumor immune cells. It uses a viral vector to deliver a unique combination of three critical transcription factors (genes) through intra-tumoral injection. The transcription factors make cancer cells become antigen-presenting dendritic cells. These immunogenic cells present their own diversity of tumor-specific antigens to effector immune cells, reliably and robustly inducing immune responses that eradicate the heterogeneous tumor.
Cancer remains a major health challenge. Currently available immunotherapies show strong effectiveness only in a limited number of patients, and often lose their efficacy as the tumor develops resistance. In addition, immunotherapies come with high price (e.g. CAR-T cell approach costing approx. € 350k/patient). Despite these shortcomings, the global immune-oncology market is one of the fastest growing therapeutics markets (€114.6 B by 2024 with a CAGR of 14.3%). Large players like BMS, Merck and Roche have shown to be keen on acquisitions of high-potential technologies. There is thus an urgent need and high demand for innovative cost-effective immunotherapies consistently effective in a broader range of cancer patients – something that Asgard Therapeutics will deliver with TrojanDC in the form of a personalized and highly specific immune therapy using a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
With in-vivo proof-of-concept data already obtained and a balanced team of high-performing scientists and seasoned entrepreneurs, Asgard Therapeutics has locked up key factors towards maximizing its chances of success. This SME instrument grant will ensure a sound strategy towards commercialization of TrojanDC.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences medical biotechnology genetic engineering gene therapy
- social sciences economics and business business and management entrepreneurship
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology immunotherapy
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.3. - PRIORITY 'Societal challenges
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H2020-EU.2.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
223 81 Lund
Sweden
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.