SQZ Biotech

SQZ Biotechnologies was spun out of MIT based on a scientific breakthrough by Dr. Armon Sharei, Prof. Klavs Jensen and Prof. Robert Langer. The company is based in Boston, MA and backed by Polaris Partners and 20/20 Healthcare Partners. The company’s technology provides a novel way to engineer cell function by using a gentle squeeze to disrupt the cell membrane and enable delivery of molecules into target cells. Applications for the SQZ platform are numerous, with the company planning to pursue powerful immune engineering approaches in a number of indications.
On December 7, 2015 the company announced a $500M partnership with Roche to develop a B cell therapy platform that would empower a patient’s own immune cells to fight a broad range of cancers. The deal leverages SQZ’s pioneering technology to engineer B cells as a therapeutic platform for oncology – a novel approach with the potential to overcome many of the shortcomings of current cell-based therapies.