HQ Team
June 30, 2025: AbbVie Inc. will buy Capstan Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, for $2.1 billion in cash to acquire the latter’s investigational medicine to treat autoimmune diseases and its delivery technology.
Capstan’s technology is slated to deliver special genetic material, called RNA, directly into cells inside the body. The experimental drug named CPTX2309 is currently in early trials, according to a statement.
The medicine aims to help people with autoimmune diseases caused by B cells, a type of immune cell. The technology called “tLNPs” modifies these cells inside the body and can deliver RNA to specific cells in the body to change how those cells work, which could help treat many diseases in the future.
The technology could lead to new, more effective therapies that work by fixing cells inside the body without needing complex lab procedures.
Multiple Sclerosis
Autoimmune diseases happen when the body’s immune system, which normally protects humans from germs, gets confused and starts attacking their healthy cells by mistake.
This can cause problems like inflammation, pain, or damage to different parts of the body. Examples include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. RNA therapies use a special type of genetic material called RNA to tell human cells what to do.
RNA is a message or instruction manual that can help cells make certain proteins or change how they behave. Scientists can deliver these RNA messages into the body to fix problems, like stopping harmful cells or helping your immune system work better — a new and promising way to treat diseases that were hard to treat before.
“Scientific innovation is required to address not just the symptoms of autoimmune diseases, but also to resolve and potentially cure the underlying disease,” said Roopal Thakkar, M.D., executive vice president, research and development and chief scientific officer, AbbVie.
“By advancing CPTX2309 and utilising Capstan’s novel platform technology, AbbVie and Capstan aim to transform the care of those living with autoimmune diseases by developing treatments that have the potential to reset the immune system.”
Harmful B cells
The therapy involved in the process is called CAR-T, which is a way to teach the body’s immune system’s T cells, another kind of immune cell, to find and destroy specific bad cells. Usually, doctors take T cells out of the patient’s body, change them in a lab to recognise CD19 on B cells, and then put them back to kill the harmful B cells. This is called ex vivo therapy and is complicated and slow.
CPTX2309 works inside the body or in vivo without needing to take cells out and change them in the lab. It uses tiny fat particles (tLNPs) to deliver instructions (mRNA) directly to your T cells inside your body. These instructions tell human T cells to temporarily wear the “CD19 hunter” badge so they can find and kill the harmful B cells causing the autoimmune disease.
“ In vivo CAR-T represents a potential new treatment modality in medicine, embodying the transformative power of cell therapy with the accessibility and scalability of an off-the-shelf biologic. This technology has the potential to become a first-in-class platform to treat a wide range of autoimmune diseases,” said Laura Shawver, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer, Capstan.
