Evox’ Exosome Engineering Approach for Surface Display of Biologics Highlighted

07 October 2021

LANDMARK PAPER HIGHLIGHTS EVOX THERAPEUTICS’ CUTTING EDGE EXOSOME ENGINEERING APPROACH FOR ENHANCED SURFACE DISPLAY OF BIOLOGICS

Evox’s engineered exosomes show better efficacy compared to conventional biologics and significantly outperformed other previously published exosome display platforms

Evox Therapeutics Ltd (‘Evox’ or the ‘Company’), a leading exosome therapeutics company, announces that it has, in close collaboration with one of its co-founder’s lab at the Karolinska Institute, published a landmark paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering outlining the engineering of exosomes for surface display of proteins. The publication demonstrates the ability to engineer exosomes to display specific protein receptors on their surface and through that optimisation achieve better efficacy relative to conventional biologics in three different mouse inflammatory disease models. In addition, Evox’s technology for displaying and oligomerising proteins on the exosome surface significantly (p < 0.0001) outperforms other previously described exosome surface display scaffolds including Lamp2b and PTGFRN.

As a proof of concept for the display of therapeutic proteins on the exosome surface, the authors systematically screened and optimised the surface display of proteins using TNFa and IL6 inhibitors as a model system. They demonstrated that hundreds of copies of protein could be displayed on the surface of exosomes, that the two inhibitors could be co-expressed at the same time on the exosome creating a multi-specific drug, and that these exosomes demonstrated roughly 10-fold improved efficacy over the soluble versions of the biologics in vitro and outperformed them in murine models of systemic inflammation, neuroinflammation, and intestinal inflammation.

Dr Antonin de Fougerolles, Chief Executive Officer of Evox, commented:

“This publication highlights a small part of our cutting edge DeliverEXTM technology that enables the engineering of exosomes to effectively display and deliver drugs. Exosome surface display of proteins results in significantly improved potency relative to conventional biologics. In much the same way as bivalent mAb are more efficacious than monovalent Fab drugs, multivalent display of hundreds of copies of protein on exosomes markedly improves activity relative to the soluble biologic alone even when judged on an equimolar basis. Evox is using this surface display approach in several of its therapeutic programmes and this complements our other work on exosome-mediated intracellular delivery of drug payloads such as enzymes, RNAi and AAV.”

For enquiries, please contact:

Dr Antonin de Fougerolles, Chief Executive Officer, Evox Therapeutics Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 819140

Simon Conway / Natalie Garland-Collins, FTI Consulting
Tel: +44 (0) 203 727 1000

About Evox Therapeutics

Evox Therapeutics is a privately held, Oxford-based biotechnology company focused on harnessing and engineering the natural delivery capabilities of extracellular vesicles, known as exosomes, to develop an entirely new class of biotherapeutics. Backed by Oxford Sciences Innovation and supported by a comprehensive intellectual property portfolio, Evox’s mission is to positively impact human health by creating novel exosome-based biotherapeutics for the treatment of various severe diseases with limited options for patients and their families. Evox has created substantial proprietary technology to modify exosomes using various molecular engineering, drug loading, and targeting strategies to facilitate targeted drug delivery to organs of interest, including the brain and the central nervous system. Exosome-based drugs have the potential to address some of the limitations of protein, antibody and nucleic acid-based therapies by enabling delivery to cells and tissues that are currently out of reach using other drug delivery technologies, and Evox is leading the development within this emerging therapeutic space.

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