Technology to Change the Tumor-Immune Dialogue
Cancer masks its identity and threat with immunosuppressive signals
Invasive cancer maintains a steady discourse with regulatory cells that blocks the adaptive immune system and promotes disease progression. Standard chemo- or immunotherapies, which act on patients over hours or days, do little to change cancer’s month-by-month buildup of pro-metastasis, pro-growth signaling. Qrono’s Eloquent™ platform uses mathematically optimized polymer particles to start healthy dialogues along conserved pathways by delivering the right amount of agent at the right rate to the right cells. Each of these patentable drug-polymer-particle combinations offers a unique way to unmask the threat posed by a patient's cancer and make it the focus of a robust adaptive immune response.
Antigen presenting cells (APCs) listen for threats and instruct T cells on how to respond
A number of treatment modalities, including radiotherapy and select chemotherapy regimes, stress and kill tumor cells causing the release of signals, such as heat shock proteins and other damage associated molecular patterns that alert the body to cancer's danger. These signals activate antigen presenting cells (APCs) that serve as sentinels surveying threats and directing matching T cells to respond. APCs, however, tightly regulate their own activation. This internal regulation limits an APC's ability to prime a T cell response even in the presence of stronger immunogenic signals from drug or agonist therapies.
Eloquent™ therapy helps antigen presenting cells convey cancer's threat to T cells
Feedback-loops within antigen presenting cells (APCs) inherently limit the strength of agonist-initiated T cell responses that could otherwise cure cancer. Inhibiting feedback within neoantigen-rich APCs builds stronger cancer-specific T cell responses than therapy from targeted immunogenic agents. Yet specificity is critical, as misdirected inhibition could easily damage healthy tissues. Eloquent™ therapy only inhibits feedback in the APCs that phagocytize neoantigens. We expect class QR21x therapies to drive the expansion of T cells that infiltrate metastatic cancer and protect against recurrence more effectively than genetically engineering cell therapies.