Nextera AS, Oslo

Nextera was founded in 2009 by Bio-Medisinsk Innovasjon AS, Birkeland Innovasjon AS (now Inven2, TTO for the University of Oslo) together with the key scientists behind the technology, Geir Åge Løset and Inger Sandlie. The lead inventor has been Dr. Geir Åge Løset, challenging established facts about the functions and mechanisms behind phage display technology in his work at the laboratory of Inger Sandlie at the University of Oslo. Professor Sandlie is one of the pioneers in the field of antibody engineering, and she and her group have articles in highly rated journals such as Nature, Nature Reviews in Drug Discovery and PNAS. Nextera will exploit the technology platform held by the company to identify new drug targets for autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases represent a diverse collection of diseases in terms of demographic profile and clinical manifestations. All are characterized by damage to tissues and organs that arises from the loss of self-tolerance. However, disease pathogenesis and antigens remain unknown or poorly characterized. Therefore, autoimmune diseases are today treated by suppressing the immune system as a whole. This is a problem, as a fully functional immune system is necessary to fight infection and cancer. Target indications for the use of our platform are patients with lack of good alternative therapies.