Strategic agreement will accelerate the manufacturing of fully human multispecific therapies for chronic retinal diseases with high unmet need using Asimov’s CHO Edge System

Boston, Massachusetts, and San Carlos, California, November 19, 2024 – Asimov, the synthetic biology company advancing the design and manufacture of therapeutics, today announced a licensing agreement for its CHO Edge System with RevOpsis Therapeutics (“RevOpsis”), a next-generation biopharmaceutical company spearheading innovation of multispecific biologics in ophthalmic therapies. This agreement follows a successful cell line development campaign with Asimov’s CHO Edge System for the lead RevOpsis asset, RO-104.  

Under the terms of the agreement, RevOpsis will integrate the CHO Edge System in the development and commercialization of its first-in-class fully modular tri-specific biologic, RO-104, for the treatment of retinal vascular diseases. RO-104 is designed to address all three clinically validated dominant angiogenic pathways (VEGF-A, VEGF-C, Ang-2) implicated in retinal vascular disease progression, including neovascular AMD and diabetic macular edema. RevOpsis has made significant progress with clinical progression of RO-104 supporting the initiation of IND-enabling studies beginning in January 2025

The CHO Edge System incorporates a GMP-banked CHO-K1 glutamine synthetase (GS) knockout host – or alternatively a GS-Fut8 double knockout for producing afucosylated antibodies – along with a hyperactive transposase, a library of over one thousand characterized genetic parts for vector design, and advanced AI and biophysics models. The system reliably generates stable cell lines with high titer and exceptional product quality, enabling optimization of the expression vector and bioreactor processes across various biologics modalities. 

Alec Nielsen, Asimov co-founder and CEO, said: “Asimov’s CHO Edge System continues to gain rapid adoption since its launch last year. We are delighted that RevOpsis is joining the growing set of partners that are putting their trust in our platform. CHO Edge will form the cornerstone of their bioproduction process for an impactful therapeutic that will serve unmet needs in a growing patient population. We look forward to supporting their biologic development as they progress through clinical trials.” 

Ramanath Bhandari, RevOpsis co-founder and CEO, commented: “RevOpsis is committed to the rapid discovery and development of novel multispecific therapies utilizing our modular RevMod™ Platform that consists of fully-human libraries. Asimov’s CHO Edge System has exhibited great performance and will underpin the development and commercialization of our lead clinical asset RO-104 for the treatment of retinal vascular disease progression, including neovascular age-related macular degeneration.” 

To learn more about the CHO Edge System, please visit Asimov’s webpage at https://www.asimov.com/cho

For further information please contact:

Asimov: 

Chris Thorne

Asimov

Email: chris.thorne@asimov.com

Francesca Wallace

Zyme Communications:

Tel: +44 (0) 7506424870

Email: francesca.wallace@zymecommunications.com

RevOpsis: 

Jessi Prentice

Director, Operations, RevOpsis

Email: jprentice@revopsis.com 

Cassy Dump

Shine Communications

Email: press@revopsis.com

About Asimov 

Asimov’s mission is to advance humanity’s ability to design living systems, enabling biotechnologies with outsized societal benefit. The company is developing a synthetic biology platform – from cells to software – to design and manufacture next-generation therapeutics, including biologics, cell/gene therapies, and RNA through a combination of products, services, and collaborations. 

Founded by bioengineers from MIT and Boston University and headquartered in Boston, the company has raised over $200 million from top institutional investors including Andreessen Horowitz, CPP Investments, Horizons Ventures, and Fidelity Management & Research Company. For more information, visit www.asimov.com. 

About RevOpsis Therapeutics

Founded in 2018, RevOpsis Therapeutics is a privately held, next-generation biopharmaceutical company spearheading innovation in ophthalmic therapies. Guided by a team of leading physicians, scientists, and business leaders, we are dedicated to leveraging our proprietary Rev-Mod Platform to develop and commercialize groundbreaking treatments for chronic multifactorial diseases. With a steadfast commitment to responsibly advancing patient care, we aim to usher in a new era of improved disease management and extended disease remission. For more information, please visit www.revopsis.com

About RO-104

Leveraging the proprietary Rev-Mod platform, RO-104 is RevOpsis’ current lead candidate. Engineered as a first-in-class fully human modular tri-specific biologic designed to address all three clinically validated dominant angiogenic pathways (VEGF-A, VEGF-C, Ang-2) implicated in retinal vascular disease progression, including neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD). RO-104 represents a significant innovative advancement in the treatment landscape for retinal vascular diseases. Backed by a significant body of preclinical evidence demonstrating intended efficacy and safety in established animal models, RO-104 heralds a transformative approach positioned to redefine the current standard of care for patients with nAMD.

About Rev-Mod Platform

The proprietary Rev-Mod Platform employs a modular 'plug-and-play' approach to streamline and expedite the efficient discovery and development of multispecific biologics targeting a wide spectrum of chronic, prevalent, large diseases, that are the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. Our proprietary platform boasts a vast library of nearly 30 billion fully human antibody components in a structured phage display system, facilitating rapid identification and assembly of multispecific product candidates. With seamless compatibility, the Rev-Mod platform enables swift and efficient design of multispecific biologics to address unmet needs in major therapeutic areas including ophthalmology, oncology, and immune-mediated diseases.

Highlights

  • Virtual Private Network (VPN): Users connect to the cluster, provide some credentials and are then able to access internal tools.
  • Single Sign-On: A tool like Kerberos allows you to use the same account across various components.
  • Home-grown user accounts: You implement an authentication system and users have a separate username/password for your computing infrastructure.

Asimov, the synthetic biology company building a full-stack platform to program living cells, announced today it has been awarded a contract as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Automating Scientific Knowledge Extraction (ASKE) opportunity.

Through ASKE, Asimov will work to develop a physics-based artificial intelligence (AI) design engine for biology. The goal of the initiative is to improve the reliability of programming complex cellular behaviors.

“To achieve truly predictive engineering of biology, we require dramatic advances in computer-aided design. Machine learning will be critical to bridge genome-scale experimental data with computational models that accurately capture the underlying biophysics. As genetically engineered systems grow in complexity, they become difficult for humans to design and understand. For simple genetic systems with only a couple of genes, synthetic biologists typically use high-throughput screening and basic optimization algorithms. But to engineer more complex applications in health, materials, and manufacturing, we need radically new algorithms to intelligently design the DNA and simulate cell behavior.”

Alec Nielsen, Phd, Asimov CEO
Over the past 50 years, DARPA has been a world leader in spurring innovation across the field of AI, including statistical-learning and rule-based approaches. We are proud to work with DARPA to advance the state-of-the-art in AI-assisted genetic engineering.

Asimov’s founders previously built a hybrid genetic engineering and computer-aided design platform called Cello to program logic circuit behaviors in cells. The ASKE opportunity will seek to support an ambitious expansion in the types of biological behaviors that can be engineered.

Asimov’s approach will leverage “multi-omics” cellular measurements, structured biological metadata, and novel AI architectures that combine deep learning, reinforcement learning, and mechanistic modeling. Over the past year, the company has ramped up hiring in experimental synthetic biology, machine learning, and data science to accelerate development of their genetic design platform.

Highlights

Headering 3

DARPA recently announced a multi-year investment of $2B into innovative artificial intelligence research called the AI Next campaign. A part of this wide-ranging AI strategy is DARPA’s Artificial Intelligence Exploration program, which was developed to help expeditiously move pioneering AI research from idea to exploration in fewer than 90 days. DARPA’s ASKE opportunity is part of this program and is focused on developing AI technologies that can reason over rich models of complex systems.

“Over the past 50 years, DARPA has been a world leader in spurring innovation across the field of AI, including statistical-learning and rule-based approaches. We are proud to work with DARPA to advance the state-of-the-art in AI-assisted genetic engineering.”

Alec Nielsen, PhD, Asimov CEO
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