Refuge Biotechnologies

Refuge Biotechnologies is a synthetic biology company developing intelligent cell therapeutics for cancer immunotherapy. Refuge's proprietary receptor-dCas platform leverages a unique gene engineering approach based on precision CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) and CRISPR interference (CRISPRi). By connecting ligand specific receptors to dCas, Refuge enables cells to sense its surroundings and conditionally activate or repress multiple genes when they encounter specific external antigens. In particular, with receptor-dCas, immune cells can now be engineered to conditionally turn off or on certain immune-inhibitory or immune-stimulatory genes on-demand, to generate more potent CAR-T immune cells when it senses the presence of a tumor cell.