EVOQ Therapeutics

EVOQ Therapeutics is developing treatments for autoimmune diseases. The company became a spinoff from the University of Michigan in 2016 and was co-founded by James Moon, Anna Schwendeman and William Brinkerhoff who serve as chief scientific officer, vice president of preclinical development and chief executive officer respectively. The company developed a synthetic high-density lipoprotein platform called NanoDisc for the delivery of therapeutic antigens directly into the lymph nodes. The body’s lymph system contains large depots of dendritic cells which act as antigen-presenting cells that prime different types of effector T cells and orchestrate immune responses towards immune tolerance or immune activation.

Amgen and EVOQ Therapeutics are partnered for licensing and collaboration to discover and develop drugs for autoimmune disorders. The companies aim to use dendritic cells to develop immune tolerance. EVOQ has a compound that targets MOG antibody disease, a condition that results in neuro-spinal swelling and is typically misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis. A second compound targets type 1 diabetes.