SuRE™ promoter screening: customizing your therapy for improved safety and efficacy 

standing the challenge: the right place, the right time 

The development of cell and gene therapies is a complex and time-consuming process that depends on therapeutic genes being expressed in the right tissues, at the right time and at the right dosage. A key challenge lies in identifying and optimizing promoters and enhancers that precisely control transgene expression in target cells and which do not get silenced over time as seen for example for viral promoters. Conventional methods to generate novel promoters by rational design lacks throughput in both design and subsequent validation and novel computational design approaches still need to address the challenge of high-throughput real-life validation. 

Improving gene therapy and cell therapy with SuRE™ 

Annogen’s SuRE™ (Survey of Regulatory Elements) platform is a massively parallel reporter assay designed to expedite the discovery and optimization of gene promoters and enhancers critical for the success of cell and gene therapies. By providing a comprehensive solution for identifying, characterizing, and engineering optimal promoters, SuRE™ empowers researchers to develop safer, more effective, and durable therapeutic products. 

Key features of the SuRE™ platform include: 

    • High-throughput screening: Identify promoters through an unbiased, exhaustive in vitro screening of the entire human genome, followed by a large-scale screen of pairwise combinations of putative candidate sequences.   
    • In vivo compatibility: SuRE™ is compatible with a broad range of vectors, including plasmids, AAV, lentivirus, Sleeping Beauty, and PiggyBac, enabling screening in various cell types and conditions, both in vitro and in vivo.
    • Exclusive rights: Novel promoters identified in a bespoke screening program can be patented by the customer, providing you with a competitive advantage. 

Applications in cell and gene therapy 

SuRE™ has a broad range of applications in cell and gene therapy development, including:  

    • De novo promoter discovery
    • Promoter optimization
    • Inducible promoters
    • RNA structure and stability optimization 

Accelerate your development with Annogen 

Our team of experts is dedicated to supporting your research and development efforts, as we have done for numerous top biopharmaceutical companies before. We offer a range of services, including custom promoter identification and optimization, licensing opportunities for our proprietary promoters, as well as custom identification of favorable transgene integration sites.

Why promoter design is no longer just an expression checkbox, it’s the key to therapeutic endurance.

Why promoter design is no longer just an expression checkbox, it’s the key to therapeutic endurance.

Promoter design is becoming central to durable cell and gene therapy, as the field moves beyond delivery and toward precise expression control. Standard promoters like CMV or PGK often fail to solve key clinical challenges: off-target activity, “always-on” expression that can drive cellular exhaustion, and epigenetic silencing that shuts therapies down in vivo. Annogen’s SuRE™ platform addresses these bottlenecks by experimentally screening millions of non-coding DNA fragments in relevant models and refining designs with machine learning. The result is not a generic promoter, but a validated, non-viral promoter tailored for the specific tissue, condition, and therapeutic context.

VectorY’s Clinical Milestone and the Shift Toward Experimentally-Validated Promoters

VectorY’s Clinical Milestone and the Shift Toward Experimentally-Validated Promoters

The first patient dosing in VectorY Therapeutics’ PIONEER-ALS trial marks a definitive shift in gene therapy, moving past the “conservative” reliance on blunt viral promoters and the “digital guesses” of AI. While many rely on algorithms built from incomplete and insensitive data, VTx-002 is powered by an Annogen genome-derived promoter discovered through rigorous, large-scale experimental validation. This milestone proves that true therapeutic precision isn’t predicted in a black box—it is found by interrogating the genome directly to deliver the biological truth required for the clinic.

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