Nuntius Therapeutics Emerges from Stealth, Announces Taiho Pharmaceutical Partnership

This week, Nuntius Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing both mRNA therapies and delivery vehicles, announced a collaborative agreement with Japanese company Taiho Pharmaceutical. The terms allow Taiho to use Nuntius’ cell-specific peptide dendrimer- and lipid-based nanocarriers to develop novel mRNA-based cancer immunotherapies. 

The financial terms of the collaboration agreement were not disclosed. Nuntius, which has been operating in stealth mode until now, did say that the agreement followed a successful feasibility study during which Taiho evaluated Nuntius’ mRNA delivery technology. The partners are also keeping the results of the feasibility study confidential. 

Commenting on the Taiho partnership, Benita Nagel, Nuntius’ CEO described the company as “an excellent partner for us given their strong oncology focused research and commercial capabilities.” Albert Kwok, PhD, Nuntius’ CSO, added that the partnership “validates our carriers as exceptionally effective cell specific delivery technology for genetic medicine.”

Nagel and Kwok co-founded Nuntius—the Latin word for “messenger”—to continue to explore the potential of mRNA therapies. Prior to co-founding Nuntius, Kwok completed two post-doctoral programs focused on nucleic acid delivery and disease pathophysiology and worked on therapy delivery efforts at a biotech company. His expertise in the space is critical to Nuntius efforts in the space, Nagel noted in an interview with GEN. Nuntius has also assembled a team of business and scientific advisors to help build its business including Robert Hawkins, PhD, an expert in cancer biotherapeutics, whose work in antibody affinity maturation contributed to the development of Humira.

“mRNA as a [drug] modality showed its superpowers during the [COVID-19] pandemic,” Nagel said. “[We] saw so many possibilities beyond COVID .. and we knew we had a best-in-class delivery technology at hand, and that’s why we started Nuntius.” 

Delivering mRNA therapies to their target tissues remains a challenge, one that companies like Nuntius are seeking to address. When people think of delivery vehicles, they often think of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) which have been successfully used to deliver some kinds of mRNA therapeutics. But they are not necessarily ideal for all applications due to issues with immunogenicity risk and accumulation in the liver. Developing newer delivery technologies can expand the range of diseases that could be successfully targeted and treated by mRNAs.

Nuntius believes that its vehicles address the shortcomings of technologies like LNPs. The company is commercializing an emerging class of nanocarriers called dendrimer lipid nanocarriers, which it claims can be manufactured cost effectively in large quantities based on existing GMP methods. Importantly, “we can target tissues beyond the liver” and there is a lower risk of adverse immunogenic effects, Nagel noted.

Nuntius relies on computational models to select the best options for packaging and delivering mRNA therapeutics from a pool of potential candidate nanocarriers. Machine learning algorithms in particular are valuable tools for making sense of highly complex biological data sets and speeding up innovation,” Nagel noted. The company has shared specific details of the machine learning methods it uses to identify optimal peptide-dendrimer nanocarriers in a paper titled “In Silico Screening Accelerates Nanocarrier Design for Efficient mRNA Delivery” that was published earlier this year in Advanced Science. 

In the paper, the scientists describe applying computational models to a “large theoretical nanocarrier pool consisting of over 4.5 million formulations.” These models are designed to accurately predict “clinically relevant physio-chemical properties of dendrimer-lipid nanocarriers, along with their mRNA payload delivery efficiency in human cells,” the scientists wrote. When they tested the top nanocarrier identified by the models, it “consistently outperforms state-of-the-art LPXs and LNPs when deployed to deliver mRNA payloads to human cells.” The technology is also “highly modular and programmable,” Nagel noted.

Building relationships with drug developers interested in using its nanocarriers is one part of Nuntius’ business. The company is also using the nanocarriers to develop its own pipeline of mRNA therapies for cancer, lung diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases. Nagel told GEN that these therapies are currently in the preclinical stage and that the company’s most advanced asset is its cancer immunotherapy. 

Nuntius has a holding company in the U.S. but operates out of its subsidiary office in London.