AdoShell®
Encapsulating cells with an immunoprotective biomaterial, capable of maintaining their functionality while protecting them from degradation by the immune system
Cell-based therapies consist in the administration of cells as living agents to fight a disease. It has the potential to cure a disease, rather than to chronically treat it. As a result, this area has grown exponentially in recent years. However, despite notable recent clinical and commercial successes, cell-based therapies continue to face some challenges that limit their widespread clinical applications and commercialization.
The use of biomaterials is currently being explored to progress towards new and more effective cell therapies. Biomaterials can perform several important functions and significantly improve the delivery, viability, retention and safety of therapeutic cells.
Adocia has therefore used its expertise in chemistry and biochemistry and its innovation capabilities to create the AdoShell® platform, a hydrogel-based scaffold designed to prevent immune recognition and mitigate the use of immunosuppression.
The AdoShell® scaffold displays a number of advantages: improve delivery and viability, facilitate retention of cells within a particular body cavity, ensure functional immune isolation without leading to fibrosis and enable retrievability for improved safety.
The AdoShell® cell therapy platform is currently being developed for allogeneic cell therapy in diabetes, with AdoShell® Islets containing islets of Langerhans. Preclinical proof-of-concept has been successfully completed and Adocia is continuing its development.
The application of AdoShell® to other pathologies is vast and could, for example, involve the treatment of hemophilia, Parkinson’s disease, etc. The platform could also benefit to any therapies where cells are engineered for the continuous delivery of therapeutic proteins that are absent or decreased in patients owing to congenital mutations.
