Limula SA, a company based in Lausanne, Switzerland, announces today that it has been awarded a CHF 2.5 million (€ 2.5 million) non-dilutive Accelerator grant from Innosuisse, the Swiss innovation agency. Following a three-stage evaluation process, Limula was selected amongst the 753 Swiss start-ups and SMEs that submitted a proposal. With a total budget of CHF 112 million, Innosuisse aims to support 53 of the country’s most promising start-up companies in their market entry phase.
Cell & Gene Therapies: from treatments to cures.
Over the past five years, six cancer therapies based on gene-edited cells – called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cells – have been approved in the USA and in Europe, and many more are in development. Spectacular results were obtained in young children suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, but also in adults with other forms of blood cancers, many of them remaining cancer-free more than a decade after receiving a single injection. With more under evaluation at pre-clinical stage and in clinical trials, Cell and Gene Therapy products have the potential to cure millions of patients globally each year. These ‘living drugs’ leverage the latest discoveries in cellular engineering and oncology and provide the immune system with a significant boost against previously uncurable tumours. Unfortunately, with a cost of up to half a million Swiss francs per patient, these life-saving treatments remain unavailable to most patients suffering from what are now curable conditions. This is in part because obtaining CAR T and other cell therapy products from the patients’ own cells still involves many manual steps, making them too complex and too expensive to produce at scale.