Spica Therapeutics

Spica Therapeutics descends from OncoSpear, an academic spin-out founded by researchers at Aarhus University, the University of Southern Denmark and Inserm in France, and develops macrophage-directed antibody programs. The company is a biotechnology company developing therapies against cancer, fibrosis and inflammatory diseases by targeting macrophage biology. Patient-derived single-cell data and proprietary computation reveal actionable targets in human disease tissue.

Unlike conventional approaches that treat macrophages as a single cell type, the platform enables precise characterization of the macrophage populations most strongly associated with disease severity, progression and clinical outcome. The lead programs focus on depletion of CD163+ tumor-associated macrophages, increased T cell activation and potentiation of immunotherapy-mediated killing. One use of the platform is defining biomarkers to identify the patient populations most likely to benefit from treatment.