Coya Therapeutics, Inc. has expanded and strengthened its patent estate beyond COYA 302, which is a combination of COYA 301 with CTLA-4 Ig. This license with UNeMed Corporation (UNeMed), the Technology Transfer Office of University of Nebraska Medical Center, covers the combination of COYA 301 with GM-CSF and additional immune analogues and provides a next generation approach with a novel combination to synergistically modulate and reduce inflammation. UNeMed will receive payments upon achievement of certain milestones and will be eligible to receive tiered low single-digit royalty on net sales.

GM-CSF is a potent immune modulator known to promote Treg activities and dampen pro-inflammatory T effector responses, and ld IL-2 is a cytokine that enhances Treg function and numbers. Preclinical data generated by the Gendelman laboratory at UNeMed demonstrated that the combination of ld IL-2 + GM-CSF generated a synergistic increase in Tregs in mice tissue, including in peripheral blood, spleen, and lymphoid cells. This included a 4-to-6-fold higher expression of Tregs in mice treated with the combination compared to treatments with either cytokine alone.

Other markers that indicate a suppressive Treg phenotype were dramatically increased as well, including a 4-fold increase in CD25+CD127low cells and a synergistic increase in the rates of CD25+CD4+ Tregs that express CD39+, ICOS+ markers, and GITR+.