Previously dba Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and last SBIR involved in 2009, in May 2018 the firm was renamed Sensei Biotherapeutics. Headquartered in Rockville MD but having facilites in the Seaport District of Boston MA, the firm is now developing precision cancer therapeutics targeting a novel and untapped tumor-specific antigen called ASPH, or aspartate ?-hydroxylase. ASPH is expressed in more than 20 cancer types, both solid and hematologic tumors, and correlates with poor patient survival. The firm's therapeutics are immunologically optimized effectively to promote robust and multi-functional, target-specific immune response, and are being developed with proprietary companion diagnostics to enable precision medicine through highly-specified patient selection. Additionally, Sensei has pioneered a proprietary immuno-oncology technology platform - designated SPIRIT - to aid the immune system in the detection and elimination of cancer. The presence of subtle differences in antigen expression between cancer and normal is key to this process. Headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, Sensei has a pipeline of cancer vaccines and T-cell therapies based on a proprietary R&D approach in-house and in collaboration with key academic collaborators at Brown University.
