Dr. Pere Santamaria was born in a small town on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. When he was 15, he became debilitatingly sick and spent the better part of a year in hospital until physicians diagnosed him with myasthenia gravis - an autoimmune condition where the body destroys the ability for your muscles and nerves to communicate effectively. While there is currently no cure, there are treatments, and living with this disease has given him a highly personal connection to the autoimmune research field he pursued, which includes conditions like type 1 diabetes.

Dr. Santamaria went on to obtain both an MD and PhD from the University of Barcelona but was so enticed by the exciting research environment in the United States that he moved across the Atlantic to pursue postdoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota. He became increasingly aware of the paucity of research with respect to type 1 diabetes so when he was offered a position at the University of Calgary to lead his own research team, he leapt at the opportunity to study this condition and other autoimmune disorders.

Autoimmune disorders arise when the immune system dysfunctions. Normally immune cells constantly circulate the body, identifying threats and eliminating them. To do this successfully they must differentiate between cells that are part of our body and those that are invaders. This “self-recognition” is a core feature of a healthy immune system. The breakdown of this feature can result in one of the over 100 different autoimmune diseases, where the body becomes confused and attacks itself. In type 1 diabetes, a type of immune cell called T-cells attack the beta cells in the pancreas that are responsible for responding to glucose and producing insulin. Without these cells, the body can no longer regulate blood sugar and diabetes results.

To treat this disease, Dr. Santamaria founded Parvus Therapeutics and developed Navacims™, nanoparticles (small particles) that are coated in a protein customized to treat type 1 diabetes. This protein is derived from pancreatic cells and can specifically attach to the disease-causing T-cells. When the drug binds to these T-cells it reprograms them. T-cells not only stop attacking your own cells, but they actually multiply and start protecting the pancreatic cells. This precision medicine is revolutionary as it specifically targets the disease-causing immune cells and results in a reversion of the disease, providing an opportunity to cure patients. This is in comparison to current broad immunosuppressive therapies which dampen the entire immune system and merely treat symptoms rather than provide a cure.

In 2017 Parvus Therapeutics entered into a licencing agreement with Novartis. This collaboration enabled Parvus Therapeutics to continue their critical pre-clinical work with Navacim™, while allowing Novartis to invest their massive resources into clinical development and commercialization. Through this partnership we may soon see the first cure for type 1 diabetes thanks to the ground-breaking research of Dr. Pere Santamaria and his team.

— Written by Kali Iyer