SAN DIEGO - s4story -- Desna Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering antigen-specific immune tolerance therapies, announced that it received a Small Business Innovation Research Phase I grant from the National Science Foundation to advance its type 1 diabetes program. The award will fund translational activities supporting development of the company's proprietary HepTol platform, a novel disease-modifying approach to type 1 diabetes.

Unlike therapies that manage the consequences of type 1 diabetes, HepTol is designed to intervene at the root of the disease: the autoimmune attack that destroys insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Using a cell-targeted messenger RNA lipid nanoparticle approach, HepTol reprograms the immune system's response to specific self-antigens while leaving the rest of the immune system intact. The platform targets the disease-associated immune response rather than broadly suppressing immune function.

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"This grant is a critical validation of our approach and a meaningful step toward bringing a truly disease-modifying therapy to people with early-stage type 1 diabetes," said George Smith, co-founder and CEO of Desna Therapeutics. "We leverage a clinically validated approach that works with the immune system's natural processes, rather than against them, to help ensure this therapy translates successfully into the clinic."

Desna's founding team has led multiple companies to successful exits and commercialized therapeutics, bringing that experience to translating tolerogenic immunotherapy into clinical applications.

A Novel Approach to a Persistent Challenge
Type 1 diabetes affects millions worldwide and requires lifelong insulin management. Previous efforts to induce immune tolerance struggled to produce robust, durable responses across genetically diverse patient populations.

Desna's platform addresses this gap through an immune reprogramming mechanism that leverages the liver's natural tolerogenic environment to generate antigen-specific regulatory responses. HepTol is designed to generate tolerogenic responses against multiple diabetes-relevant antigens by using the liver's ability to educate antigen-specific regulatory T cells. The approach combines targeted immune regulation with bystander suppression to reduce inflammation and prevent disease progression.

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The Small Business Innovation Research funding will support activities to confirm Desna's translational approach and validate its design principles as the program advances toward the clinic. The work builds on the company's research applying its platform across a pipeline of immune-mediated diseases.

About Desna Therapeutics
Desna Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing therapies based on HepTol, a cell-targeted messenger RNA lipid nanoparticle platform designed to induce antigen-specific immune tolerance for autoimmune and allergic diseases. The HepTol platform was developed by Andre Nel at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute. Desna is raising a seed round to advance its pipeline toward the clinic. The company is based in San Diego.