University of Calgary

Pere Santamaria

Submitted by alumni on Wed, 04/12/2017 - 21:48.

Pere Santamaria

Parvus Therapeutics Inc.

Pere Santamaria, a research scientist and professor in the Cumming School of Medicine, founded this bold biotech startup to translate his discovery of a new class of nanoparticle-based drugs to treat autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

This new class of drugs (called Navacims) reprograms disease-causing white blood cells by tricking them into actually suppressing the disease in a highly specific way, without compromising general immunity. Parvus Therapeutics Inc. is named after the Latin word for small, as in nanoparticles, but Santamaria’s long-term goals are big.

If Parvus succeeds in treating Type 1 diabetes in human clinical trials, Santamaria wants to develop drugs for all 100-plus chronic inflammatory disorders affecting humankind.


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