BioCentury
ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

EluSys: Seek and destroy

December 20, 1999 8:00 AM UTC

The human immune system is a fairly efficient defense system against foreign antigens, including pathogenic bacteria, viruses and toxins. However, despite its layers of surveillance, the immune system is not perfect. EluSys Therapeutics Inc. hopes to exploit one aspect of the humoral immune system, while bypassing a portion of the antigen-recognition cascade, to both enhance protection against blood-borne pathogens and prevent the self-recognition of autoimmune reactions.

EluSys' technology is based upon its heteropolymer (HP) system for binding particular antigens and marking them for destruction by the immune system, in a similar but more direct fashion than the body's complement cascade. The technology was exclusively licensed from the University of Virginia, where it was developed by founding scientist Ronald Taylor...