Celsius Therapeutics Signs Multiple Agreements with Academic Institutions to Access Samples for the Identification of Novel Targets in Immune Checkpoint Therapy Resistance

Celsius Therapeutics, a company focused on bringing personalized medicine to patients with cancer, autoimmunity and other complex diseases, today announced the signing of collaboration agreements with the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (San Francisco, USA), Institut Gustave Roussy (Paris, France) and the University Health Network (Toronto, Canada). Under these three agreements, Celsius will apply its proprietary single-cell genomics platform to tissue samples from patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies for triple negative breast cancer, bladder cancer and kidney cancer, respectively. The goal of these collaborations is the discovery of novel molecular mechanisms and targets for drug discovery.

"We are delighted to collaborate with these premier academic groups, given their disease expertise and their commitment to cutting-edge research and improving the lives of cancer patients," said Tariq Kassum, M.D., chief executive officer of Celsius. "The heterogeneity of response in immunotherapy studies suggests that a deeper understanding of disease biology and patient subpopulations is needed to fully realize the potential of this approach. These new partnerships highlight our interest in broadly engaging the academic community to better elucidate the cellular ecosystem of cancer, with the ultimate goal of translating new insights into novel precision medicines for patients."

Under these agreements, Celsius will apply its platform approach to generate single-cell data from patient biopsy samples taken pre- and post-treatment with checkpoint inhibitors. In each case, Celsius retains the ability to integrate the clinical information and single-cell genomics data generated from the studies into its growing database. The company plans to utilize its machine learning algorithms and functional genomics capabilities to rapidly identify and prioritize targets for drug discovery.

"Our integrated platform allows Celsius to obtain samples from anywhere in the world, process them in a highly industrialized manner and rapidly deploy a suite of machine learning algorithms to identify new drug targets in relevant cell types," said Christoph Lengauer, Ph.D., co-founder and chief scientific officer of Celsius. "Across just these three collaborations, we expect to analyze more than 300 longitudinal samples from over 150 patients, a scale that is unprecedented for single-cell genomics. Combined with the associated clinical data that is being gathered from these studies, we are building a massive database that will be leveraged to develop novel precision medicines."

About Celsius Therapeutics

Celsius Therapeutics is charting a new course of target and drug discovery by applying a systematic approach to single-cell sequencing of patient tissue, combining massive datasets, complex algorithms, and machine learning to discover first-in-class precision therapies with a transformative impact on the lives of patients with autoimmune diseases and cancer. Celsius was launched in 2018, is backed by Third Rock Ventures and GV (formerly Google Ventures), and is based in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, please visit www.celsiustx.com.