Why we invested:

For all the hype of cell therapies, to get beyond the 5% of eligible patients who receive such therapies today, the market needs 1) higher transfection success, and 2) multi-protein delivery in one construct. The founder of Able sciences are veteran drug developers who invented a self-amplifying RNA that delivers on both huge needs. 

They’ve shown impressively high and durable expression of their payloads in target cells, dramatically superior to that achievable through viral based engineering. Already they’ve shown expression of two functional proteins and plan to quickly demonstrate their ability to do three or four more. They went from idea to POC on human natural killer (NK) cells in a matter of months – able indeed! 

When integrated into off the shelf allogeneic cells, Able’s system can bring the cost of cell therapy under $100,000. 

We’re super excited about this ability to bring multiple protein payloads to deliver a knock-out punch on cancer, creating a plug-and-play system to either own virtually universal cell therapies and high value disease targets or enable partners to create their own efficacious target combinations.