Over the past two decades, Selecta's founders have advanced their respective fields through research supported by more than $30M in federal grants. Professor Robert Langer's laboratory at MIT has an unparalleled track record in shaping and advancing the field of drug delivery through breakthrough discoveries in the area of nanoparticle engineering and biomaterials. Building on this body of work, Professor Omid Farokhzad at Brigham and Women's Hospital-Harvard Medical School has collaborated with Professor Langer during the past five years to develop advanced methods that enable the versatile targeting of nanoparticles for specific therapeutic applications.

In parallel, research in the laboratory of Professor Ulrich von Andrian at Harvard Medical School has generated profound insights into the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate immune responses. His group has identified key events that allow the immune system to detect and respond to infectious viruses. Obseving these infectious viruses, which in effect serve as natural models of nanometer-scale particles, have prompted the founders to formulate novel and powerful strategies that exploit precisely engineered, targeted synthetic nanoparticles as delivery vehicles for bioactive molecules that potently induce or modulate the immune response.

Ongoing collaborative research, conducted at the founders' institutions, is currently supported by several multi-million dollar grants from the NCI and NIH. This work has been widely recognized among the pharmaceutical industry and academic community. The result of this collaboration is a fundamental understanding of how targeted, synthetic nanoparticles can be optimally engineered to achieve prophylactic or therapeutic immune modulation, and now forms the unique basis for Selecta Biosciences.

Dr. Langer's laboratory at MIT has been at the forefront of polymeric drug delivery systems for three decades. His laboratory has worked at the interface of biotechnology and materials science and pioneered the development of controlled release polymer systems (1976), long circulating polymeric nanoparticles and, most recently, targeted polymeric nanoparticles. Dr. Langer co-founded Selecta as the platform to commercialize nanoparticle technology for therapeutic and prophylactic immune modulation.

After spending three years in Dr. Langer's MIT lab as a Visiting Scientist developing the targeted nanoparticle technology, Dr. Farokhzad has continued to build on the platform through the incorporation of novel targeting methods and has applied it to the delivery of numerous payload classes. His laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital-Harvard Medical School is now focused on pioneering the application of nanotechnology to a myriad of clinical applications.

Dr. von Andrian is an internationally recognized expert in the basic exploration of immune responses to exogenous and endogenous challenges, such as infections, tumors and immune diseases. Using in vivo microscopic imaging technologies developed in his laboratory, Dr. von Andrian has identified how different immune cells migrate and communicate in living tissues and how immunomodulatory drugs can be designed to control and modify these events. He co-founded Selecta to apply these insights to the development of rationally engineered immunobiologics for the treatment and prevention of human diseases.

Selecta Biosciences was launched with an initial financing round from Flagship Ventures and Polaris Venture Partners to commercialize targeted nanoparticle technology for immune modulation. Selecta occupies 12,700 square feet of lab and office space in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA and is rapidly advancing its lead programs to the clinic.