Our Science
We are decoding human tissue biology to create a pipeline of next-generation therapeutics for immune-mediated diseases.
At the core of our approach is the realization that correcting disease processes at the tissue level leads to better clinical outcomes. The immune system is critical to the regulation and dysregulation of tissue homeostasis.
Immune cells in the tissues are hard to access, and they operate in highly complex systems. Mouse models are traditionally used to define their behavior, but the differences in tissue immune biology do not always allow for translatable insights needed for successful drug discovery.
Why Tregs?
Regulatory T cells, or Tregs, are a special subset of T cells that act as key regulators of the immune system. In the tissues, Tregs are important players in tissue inflammation and the mediation of tissue healing.
By studying Tregs we can better understand how those regulatory pathways affect other tissue immune and stromal cells.
Tregs modulation is key to therapeutic innovation and TRexBio is at the forefront, building a robust pipeline of transformative medicines addressing autoimmune diseases and fibrosis.
1000
There are over
tissue T reg enriched genes
95%
of T cells reside and function in tissues
An example of our Treg-enriched scRNA sequencing output across two different skin diseases, highlighting a tissue-Treg enriched pathway in red.
The TRexBio Difference
There is a growing body of scientific research highlighting the unique role of immune cells within the tissue environment. Leveraging a suite of modern computational tools and paired with deep expertise in immunology and drug development, we can decode the regulation of immune-mediated diseases at an unprecedented resolution. We can now access targets in human tissues that were once impossible to reach.
THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH
Murine biology
Validation in peripheral blood
Therapeutic molecule
THE TRex APPROACH
Human tissue biology
Computational biology and functional fingerprinting
Therapeutics built on human tissue-specific hypotheses
The TRexBio Deep Biology Platform
Our Deep Biology Platform allows us to interrogate tissue regulation through the lens of regulatory T cells (Treg). Tregs are key regulators of the immune system. Using recent advances in sequencing technologies and computational methods, we are generating a high resolution ‘map’ of tissue regulatory pathways.
We don’t stop there. Our disease-focused functional genomics platform prioritizes causal pathways in Treg modulation with unprecedented speed and precision. These cutting-edge tools help us elucidate how Tregs regulate tissue inflammation and allow us to identify crucial immune-regulatory pathways for therapeutic innovation.
High Resolution Profiling
Of Human Tissue
Proprietary System To
Recreate Tissue States In Tregs
Cutting-Edge Computational Biology + Disease-Relevant Phenotypic Assays
Cutting Edge Computational Biology + Disease-Relevant Phenotypic Assays
Novel targets with strong therapeutic hypothesis
High quality, fresh human tissues from both healthy and diseased donors are the starting point for our Deep Biology platform. We focus on skin, gut and lung tissues as the vast majority of lymphocytes reside in these tissues.
We use RNA sequencing to identify which genes are expressed in immune cells in healthy and diseased tissue states. We conduct bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing to establish the depth and the breadth of the tissue transcriptome. 1000 genes have been found to be enriched in tissue Tregs.
Modern computational tools are used to generate an in silico hypothesis by evaluating the catalog of gene expression to identify key tissue regulation pathways. This allows for high-resolution mapping of pathways in human tissue diseases.
The Treg Atlas is our tool to recreate human tissue specific pathways in vitro for experimental validation. We built the Atlas using rationally designed stimulations selected based on our internally generated data of genes or pathways present in tissue resident Tregs.
Our proprietary Assay Cascade is a suite of functional assays in human primary Tregs that interrogate multiple dimensions of Treg biology in health and disease. This cascade rapidly screens multiple targets and donors concurrently and is designed to reveal clinically relevant biology for therapeutic intervention.
After prioritizing novel targets based on their in silico hypothesis, the Functional Fingerprint revealed in the Treg Atlas and our Assay Cascade we carefully craft more bespoke assays for validating our targets for therapeutic intervention.
The foundation of our platform is a high-resolution map of tissue immune-regulation in health and disease derived from our broad collection of human tissue. Our Deep Biology Platform produces translatable insights for the initiation of new drug discovery programs.
Our discovery platform is comprised of three pillars:
Modern computational tools
enabling in silico identification of key tissue regulation pathways. This includes high resolution mapping of human tissue, as well as a suite of computational biology tools for identifying pathways.
Our TRex Treg Atlas
recreates human tissue-specific pathways for validation in our TRex Assay Cascade. This includes approximately 1,000 tissue Treg enriched genes, and reprograms blood Treg to capture 70% of those genes.
Our TRex Assay Cascade
a suite of Treg functional assays in a highly optimized workflow. This screens multiple donors and targets concurrently, and it is designed to reveal clinically relevant biology.