AbbVie acquired Capstan, including its lead asset CPTX2309, a potential first-in-class in vivo targeted lipid nanoparticle (tLNP) anti-CD19 CAR-T therapy candidate for the treatment of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases. Additionally, AbbVie has acquired Capstan’s proprietary tLNP platform technology designed to deliver RNA payloads, such as mRNA, capable of engineering specific cell types in vivo.
Capstan was co-founded in 2021 by:
- Carl June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy at Penn Medicine
- Bruce Levine, PhD, the Barbara and Edward Netter Professor in Cancer Gene Therapy at Penn Medicine
- Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at Penn Medicine
- Hamideh Parhiz, PharmD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at Penn Medicine
- Steven Albelda, MD, Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care) at Penn Medicine
- Ellen Puré, AB, PhD, Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences at Penn Vet
- Jonathan Epstein, MD, Dean, Perelman School of Medicine & Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System
- Haig Aghajanian, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine) at Penn Medicine
Read more about the acquisition by AbbVie here.