Daniel Rosenberg, a UConn Health professor of medicine, is partnering with emerging vaccine company CaroGen Corp. to develop a vaccine against colorectal cancer, according to UConn officials.
CaroGen’s technology, which has research and development facilities at UConn’s Technology Incubation Program in Farmington, is based on replication-proficient virus-like vesicles (VLVs) for treating infectious diseases and cancer, in particular chronic hepatitis B virus infection.
The VLVs activate an immune response to amplify the immune system similar to standard viral-based vaccines, but CaroGen’s technology is safer since VLVs are not viruses, UConn said.
“CaroGen was already exploring ways that our existing technology could be applied as a cancer therapy, but this is the first time we’ve considered its potential application to genetic diseases, such as many colorectal cancers,” Bijan Almassian, CaroGen CEO and co-founder, said in the release. “Dr. Rosenberg and his lab have been instrumental in providing technical know-how to further this research.”
