Celestial Therapeutics Licenses Novel mRNA Platform Technology From Harvard to Develop Next Generation Vaccines and Therapeutics
Celestial Therapeutics Inc. (“Celestial”) is pleased to announce that it has received a worldwide exclusive license from Harvard University to use a promising mRNA platform technology for the creation of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics.
Developed in the lab of George Church, PhD, Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School, the mRNA platform technology licensed by Celestial could enable next-generation, novel, self-adjuvanting mRNA vaccines for the treatment and prevention of a variety of infectious diseases and cancers. Dr. Church is also a Core Faculty member at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Celestial recognizes several significant advantages with this novel platform:
(1) Delivering an antigen-coding and adjuvant-expressing RNA sequence in a single transcript to the same cell which not only mimics a natural viral infection but also minimizes off-target toxic events triggered by adjuvants
(2) The technology specifically targets a well-defined signaling pathway for triggering innate immune function
(3) The quality and magnitude of the immune response to vaccination can be fine-tuned and customized based on the mRNA construct
(4) A single construct allows for streamlined prototyping and production of vaccine candidates rapidly and efficiently.
Dr. Ajay Gupta, President, Chairman & CEO of Celestial stated: “This novel and exciting mRNA platform technology holds the potential to enhance the safety, efficacy and durability of mRNA vaccines and will strengthen Celestial’s pipeline of exciting products that have the potential to treat, prevent and cure diseases and address huge unmet medical needs of millions of sufferers worldwide.”
Ying Kai Chan, PhD, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Wyss Institute and a Blavatnik Fellow at Harvard Business School, led the academic research that produced this mRNA platform, with support from the Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator at Harvard. “The self-adjuvanting mRNA technology that we developed at Harvard Medical School is a novel platform that holds the potential to improve and expand the use of mRNA vaccines for a variety of infectious diseases and cancers,” said Chan. “I am pleased to see this technology adopted.”
In consideration for the license, coordinated by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development, the university has received an equity stake in Celestial, among other financial terms.
About Celestial Therapeutics
Celestial is a California based biotechnology company developing a new class of dual-modal anti-infective and anti-inflammatory drugs for conditions which currently lack safe and effective treatments. Celestial’s lead product, CT-02, is being developed as a first-ever broad spectrum dual-modal antiviral & anti-inflammatory inhalation therapeutic for treating lung infections due to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), Influenza Virus (IV), and Rhinoviruses (RV). Celestial’s new class of pulmonary surfactant lipid and protein drugs are broad-spectrum for treating infections including bacterial, viral, yeast, fungal, and mycobacterial infections, while also acting as safe and effective anti- inflammatories. Celestial’s treatments have the potential to overcome drug resistance and to provide novel therapies for pandemic flu.