Obsidian Therapeutics

Obsidian Therapeutics is a privately held, biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was founded in 2015 by Michael Gilman, Steve and Shamah, Tariq Kassum. The company focuses on developing novel cell and gene therapies with pharmacologic operating systems.

The company is developing a suite of technologies that would allow for control of protein activity in cells, which should enable tunable cell and gene therapies. Obsidian uses Destabilizing Domains (DDs) to enable pharmacologic regulation of the expression of transduced gene. These DDs are then used to create cell therapies with regulated cell-surface rececptors, secreted cytokines, cytoplasmic, and nuclear proteins.

The two-part therapeutic system is designed with a synthetic biological cassette in the cell therapy and the small molecule drug that controls the cassette's activity. Obsidian's current area of focus for these therapies are in CAR-T and CAR therapies. In November 2018, Obsidian presented preclinical data demonstrating the precise regulation of cytokines and CAR in T cells with its technology using FDA approved drugs.