The human immune system has evolved to respond to microbes that threaten our lives. Like firefighters responding to a forest fire, immune cells expand to great numbers, become activated, and ready the tools for the job, waiting to be directed where to go. Some food-borne microbes were such frequent threats that humans evolved specific immune cells to profoundly and durably respond to them.

Laguna’s QUAIL platform based on such microbes is a sheep in wolf’s clothing – reversing the well-known parable, QUAIL has been modified to be harmless, incapable of causing infection or sickness, while still looking sufficiently alarming to our immune cells to provoke a large and durable response. The resulting expanded and activated immune cells can then be directed to attack tumors alone or in combination with other immunotherapies that provide tumor-specific targeting.