Uppsala, October 30th, 2026 - Elicera Therapeutics (publ) today announces that the company's co-founder, Dr. Di Yu, has been awarded a grant totaling SEK 4 million from the Swedish Research Council. The four-year research project aims to increase knowledge of how CAR-T cells should be designed to persist longer in the body and more easily penetrate solid tumors. Elicera believes the results will be synergizing to the company's work when arming CAR-T cells with iTANK.
CAR-T therapy, in which a patient's own immune cells are modified to recognize cancer cells, works very well in certain blood cancers but has so far shown limited efficacy against solid tumors. A key reason is that the cells do not survive long enough to penetrate the tumor's own protective environment and fail to kill all tumor cells, which allows the cancer cells to mutate and reestablish.
The research project that has now received funding from the Swedish Research Council investigates the CAR-T cells' baseline activity, known as tonic signaling. The hypothesis is that CAR-T cells targeting solid tumors need a balanced level of baseline activity to be able to infiltrate the tumor. The researchers will test various CAR variants, including in models of the brain tumor glioblastoma, with the goal of establishing concrete design rules for future CAR-T therapies. The project will be carried out at Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University.
"We welcome the Swedish Research Council's decision to fund this important research project, which will be led by Elicera's co-founder Di Yu. The results have the potential to result in stronger CAR-T cells, with the addition of the iTANK platform, ultimately enhancing their ability to survive and reach the tumor," says Johan Liwing, CEO of Elicera Therapeutics.
For further information please contact:
Johan Liwing, CEO, Elicera Therapeutics AB
Phone: +46 (0) 706 70 36 75
johan.liwing@elicera.com
Certified Advisor
DNB Carnegie Investment Bank (publ)
About the iTANK-platform
The iTANK technology platform has been developed for arming and enhancing CAR T-cells to meet two of the major challenges CAR T-cell therapies face in the treatment of solid tumors: a very diverse set of tumor antigen targets and a very hostile tumor microenvironment. The technology is used to incorporate a transgene into CAR T-cells encoding a neutrophil activating bacterial protein (NAP). NAP secreted from the CAR(NAP) T-cells has been shown to be able to enhance the function of CAR T-cells and importantly activating a parallel bystander immune response against the cancer via CD8+ killer T-cells. This is expected to lead to a broad attack against most antigen targets on cancer cells. The iTANK platform is used to enhance the company's own CAR T-cells but can also be universally applied to other CAR T-cell therapies under development. Proof-of-concept data was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering in April 2022. The publication, titled "CAR T cells expressing a bacterial virulence factor triggers potent bystander antitumor responses in solid cancers" (DOI number: 10.1038/s41551-022-00875-5) can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-022-00875-5. More information about iTANK platform is available here: https://www.elicera.com/technology
About Elicera Therapeutics AB
Elicera Therapeutics AB (publ) has developed the patented gene technology platform iTANK that enables the arming of new and existing CAR T-cell therapies targeting aggressive and relapsing cancer forms. Elicera Therapeutics thereby addresses a well-defined and vast market. The company's CAR T-cell therapies have shown a potent effect toward solid tumors which are recognized as particularly difficult to treat and constitute the majority of cancer cases. The company addresses a global multibillion market in cell therapy through its offering of non-exclusive licensing of the iTANK-platform to companies in the pharmaceutical industry. Elicera Therapeutics has four internal development projects in immune therapy that separately have the potential to generate substantial value through exclusive out-licensing agreements. The company's share is traded on Nasdaq First North Growth Market. For additional information, visit www.elicera.com.
