History
Medeor Therapeutics was cofounded in 2012 by Stanford University School of Medicine professors Drs. Samuel Strober, Edgar Engleman, Robert Lowsky; and entrepreneur Chih Ping (CP) Liu, and was originally known as SERC Therapeutics, after the first initial of the four co-founders. Drs. Strober, Engleman, and Lowsky have been collaborating for more than 30 years on translating groundbreaking science into achieving immune tolerance in the clinic for organ and hematopoietic cell transplant patients, such that the lifelong need for immunosuppressive drugs can be safely eliminated. What’s more, they are pioneers in the establishment of persistent mixed chimerism as the key to immune reprogramming without graft versus host disease. Keep scrolling to learn more about the development of Medeor's technology platform and important milestones in the immune tolerance field.
Milestones
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine awarded Medeor a $11.2M grant to support a Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of MDR-101.
Phase 3 program in HLA-matched living donor kidney transplantation began
Successful technology transfer of Stanford academic manufacturing to Medeor Commercial GMP manufacturer and product comparability demonstrated
Results of the first 38 matched and mismatched kidney transplant patients were published in the American Journal of Transplantation. None had kidney graft loss or graft versus host disease. Successful complete withdrawal of immunosuppressive drugs in 16 of 22 evaluable matched patients without rejection episodes or kidney disease recurrence with up to 5 years follow up.9
Formation of the company as SERC, renamed as Medeor Therapeutics in 2014 to further develop Stanford technology
Results from the Stanford Phase 2 trial of the first 16 patients were published in the American Journal of Transplantation.8
Stanford began a clinical trial designed to generate tolerance through mixed chimerism in patients with HLA mismatched kidney transplant
Stanford published a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that a matched kidney recipient, who was off all anti-rejection drugs for 28 months and counting with no evidence of rejection.7
First human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched patient was weaned off all anti-rejection drugs at Stanford.
Stanford began the clinical trial in living matched donor kidney transplant patients designed to generate tolerance through mixed chimerism.
Report in Transplantation that lymphoid irradiation plus donor CD34+ cells induced mixed chimerism in HLA-mismatched kidney transplant recipient.6
Stanford developed the approach to generate tolerance through persistent mixed chimerism after solid organ transplant in humans.5
Dr. Strober’s laboratory developed a completely posttransplant TLI-based conditioning regimen for tolerance induction to combine heart and hematopoietic cell transplants that could be applied to human deceased donor organ transplantation.4
Dr. Strober collaborated with the Stanford heart transplant group to show the potential of total lymphoid irradiation (TLI) in treating heart transplant patients with intractable rejection.3
Dr. Strober and colleagues at Stanford developed the technique for generating immune tolerance with persistent mixed chimerism in mice without evidence of graft versus host disease (GvHD).2
Report published in Science that transplant tolerance can be induced by low-intensity lymphoid irradiation.1
References:
1. Slavin, S., Strober, S., Fuks, Z., and Kaplan, H.S. Long-term survival of skin allografts in mice treated with fractionated total lymphoid irradiation. Science, 193:1252-1254, 1976.
2. Slavin, S., Fuks, Z., Kaplan, H.S., and Strober, S. Transplantation of allogeneic bone marrow without graft vs. host disease using total lymphoid irradiation. J. Exp. Med., 147:963-972, 1978.
3. Hunt, S.A., Strober, S., Hoppe, R.T., and Stinson, E.B. Total lymphoid irradiation for treatment of intractable cardiac allograft rejection. J. Heart Transplant. 10(2):211-216, 1991.
4. Woodley, S.L., Gurley, K.E., Hoffmann, S.L., Nicolls, M.R., Hagberg, R., Clayberger, C., Holm, B., Wang, X., Hall, B.M., and Strober. S. Induction of tolerance to heart allografts in rats using posttransplant TLI and anti-T cell antibodies. Transplantation, 56:1443-1447, 1993.
5. Strober, S. Benike, C., Krishnaswamy, S., Engleman, E.G., Grumet, F.K. Clinical transplantation tolerance twelve years after prospective withdrawal of immunosuppressive drugs: Studies of chimerism and anti-donor reactivity. Transplantation. 69:1549-1554, 2000
6. Millan, M.T., Shizuru, J.A., Hoffmann, P., Dejbakhsh-Jones, J.D., Scandling, J.D., Grumet, F.C., Tan, J.C., Salvatierra, O., and Strober, S. Mixed Chimerism without graft versus host disease after HLA-mismatched kidney and hematopoietic progenitor transplantation. Transplantation 73:1386-1391, 2002.
7. Scandling, J.D., Busque, S., Dejbakhsh-Jones, S., Benike, C., Millan, M.T., Shizuru, J.A., Hoppe, R.T., Lowsky, R., Engleman, E.G., and Strober, S. Tolerance and chimerism after renal and hematopoietic-cell transplantation. New Engl. J. Med 358(4):362-368 2008.
8. Scandling, J. D., Busque, S., Dejbakhsh-Jones, S., Benike, C., Sarwal, M., Millan, M.T., Shizuru, J., Lowsky, R., Engleman, E.G., and Strober, S. Tolerance and withdrawal of immunosuppressive drugs in patients given kidney and hematopoietic cell transplants. AJT. 12 (5):1133-1145 2012.
9. Scandling JD, Busque S, Shizuru JA, Lowsky R, Hoppe R, Dejbakhsh-Jones S, Jensen K, Shori A, Strober JA, Lavori P, Turnbull BB, Engleman EG, Strober S. Chimerism, graft survival, and withdrawal of immunosuppressive drugs in HLA matched and mismatched patients after kidney and hematopoietic cell transplantation. AJT. 15 (3): 695-704. 2015.