In June 2020 it was announced that Aduro Biotech would merge with Originally doing business as Nanotx Corpration and then Oncologic, Inc.,in 2008, Triton Biosystems - using heat in treatment of cancer - and Oncologic merged to become Aduro BioTech Inc. The firm is a clinical-stage immunotherapy company with three interconnected and complementary immunotherapy platforms, Listeria, GVAX and Cyclic Dinucleotides (CDNs) with broad applications in oncology, infectious diseases and biodefense. Listeria monocytogenes has been used by immunologists for years as a research tool to study the mammalian immune system, howeve Aduro is engineering Listeria to treat cancer and infectious diseases. Listeria is able to directly targets dendritic cells, one of the most important types of cells in initiating an immune response. After being taken up by dendritic cells, the Listeria delivers the disease antigens into the cytosol, where they are processed by the host cellular machinery and presented to the immune system. It then signals to the innate immune system through multiple pathways, activating cell surface Toll-like receptors and intracellular Nod-like receptors. Unlike other vaccine vectors that can be neutralized by antibodies, Listeria can be repeatedly delivered, is self-replicating and easy to manufacture. GVAX is a portfolio of cell-based immunotherapy vaccines, acquired in 2013 from BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc, based on human cancer cell lines that are genetically modified to secrete granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), an immune-stimulatory cytokine. Aduro believe that the broad antigen expression and the secretion of GM-CSF make GVAX an ideal component of combination immunotherapy. The firm has extensive preclinical and anecdotal human clinical data indicating that the combination of GVAX and Listeria is synergistic and that GVAX is potentiated by the addition of CDNs, potent immune modulators with broad application in both therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines. Cyclic Dinucleotides (CDNs) are small molecules secreted by Listeria and other intracellular pathogens that signal through STING (STimulator of INterferon Genes) to induce a potent immune response.
