Singula Bio is a bold new seed-stage biotechnology company spun out of Oxford University. It aims to become a world leader in developing neoantigen-based individualised cell therapies to use against difficult-to-treat solid malignancies such as ovarian cancer.
This patient-centred approach will pioneer immunological, medical, surgical and computational technologies to generate selective therapies that eliminate cancer, and the ultimate hope is to achieve long-term, high-quality disease-free survival for cancer patients.
Singula Bio was co-founded by Professors Ahmed Ahmed, Enzo Cerundolo and Enda McVeigh from the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health at Oxford University. It is supported by Oxford University Innovation (OUI), the University’s research commercialisation company, and it has secured generous seed-stage investment from IIU Nominees Limited to pursue its goals. Singula Bio is a landmark for OUI as it is the 250th OUI-supported venture to have passed through the office since it opened its doors in 1987.
Motivated by their many patients (and laboratory funding from charities Ovarian Cancer Action and Cancer Research UK) Profs Ahmed and Cerundolo were inspired to improve an individual’s gruelling experience of cancer and to lessen their suffering of other treatments. Together, they have an enormous knowledge in cancer medicine, cancer immunology, cell and molecular biology, and computational biology which has enabled them to design patient-specific cancer cell therapies that harness the power of the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer.
In a tumour, cancer cells carry mutations that appear foreign to a patient’s body and, therefore, their immune system reacts to these mutations. One strong form of an immune reaction is through generating mutation-specific cells called “T cells”.
Prof Ahmed, Professor of Gynaecological Oncology at the Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health, Oxford University, said:
“A key feature of cancer cells is the preponderance of genetic aberrations in their DNA. These aberrations can make proteins appear foreign to our body’s immune system which then develops immune cells (T cells) to fight cancer cells. Thanks to years of research and technology development we now know how to identify relevant tumour-specific T cells to grow them outside the body and deliver them back to patients to fight cancer cells.”