Aduro Biotech

Aduro is a clinical-stage cancer immunotherapy company with three products currently in human trials. The company’s lead candidate – an immunotherapy regimen combining our proprietary CRS-207 with GVAX Pancreas – is targeting metastatic pancreatic cancer and has received Breakthrough Therapy designation from the US Food and Drug Administration. CRS-207 is the first therapeutic agent to emerge from Aduro’s platform technology LADD (live, attenuated, double-deleted Listeria mononcytogenes), which modifies the well-understood Listeria bacterium to have a suitable safety profile and produce target antigens to stimulate a patient’s innate and adaptive immune response to fight specific tumor types. The company is developing LADD-based products, both as monotherapies and in combination with conventional and emerging cancer treatments, including GVAX vaccines (a family of cancer immunotherapies acquired and licensed by Aduro in 2013), chemotherapy, radiotherapy and checkpoint inhibitors. Based on promising initial clinical results, the combination of CRS-207 and GVAX Pancreas was given Breakthrough Therapy designation by the US FDA. The regimen is currently being assessed as a treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer in a 240 patient Phase 2b ECLIPSE trial. Other LADD-based therapies in clinical and preclinical studies are targeting mesothelioma, glioblastoma, non-small cell lung cancer, ovarian cancer and prostate cancer. Aduro is also pursuing development of a novel cancer immunotherapy based on cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs). In preclinical models, these small molecules have been shown to be an effective and well-controlled inducer of the Stimulator of Interferon Genes (STING) signaling pathway, which activates innate immunity. The company is developing a family of proprietary derivatives of STING-modulating CDNs.