Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer announced today that it has granted a license for the Artificial IMmune (AIM) nanotechnology to NexImmune, a start-up company formed in part by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine faculty members who are also involved in the development of the technology. AIM, which involves engineering artificial cells to stimulate specific immune responses, represents a potentially important advance in the development of immunotherapies for a variety of cancers and other diseases.

Central to AIM technology is the artificial antigen-presenting cell (aAPC), developed in the laboratory of Jonathan Schneck, M.D., professor of pathology, oncology and medicine, and director of the Human Immunology Program at the Institute for Cellular Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Natural antigen-presenting cells, or APCs, direct the immune system cells in attacks on targeted antigens and cells. However, under certain disease conditions, APCs can be damaged, absent or inactive. The AIM technology holds potential for use in immunotherapy because aAPCs can be engineered to orchestrate the immune system in a highly specific attack.

NexImmune was founded by the faculty inventors of the AIM technology at Hopkins and a team of entrepreneurs affiliated with Noble Life Sciences in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where the company is located.

“We are delighted that NexImmune has licensed the AIM technology, and we believe that the technology presents the NexImmune team with multiple opportunities for product development and partnership in cancer and other diseases,” says Wesley Blakeslee, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office.  

About Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer

The Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office (JHTT) is the University’s intellectual property administration center, serving Johns Hopkins researchers and inventors as a licensing, patent, and technology commercialization office and acting as an active liaison to parties interested in leveraging JHU research or materials for academic or corporate endeavors. For more info: www.techtransfer.jhu.edu