Sbir phase i: isolating and reformatting immune receptors into targeting therapies for oncology, auto-immunity, and infectious diseases

The National Science Foundation awarded Set Therapeutics Inc. $305,000 on July 1, 2026, under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) as an SBIR Phase I project grant.

Set Therapeutics will develop a dual-platform technology for isolating disease-specific T-cells and reformatting their receptors into druggable therapeutic formats. The platform isolates T-cells by co-culturing tens of millions of different T-cells with diseased cells in microscopic compartments, identifying and isolating activated cells that recognize disease, then recovering their associated disease-specific receptors. The second platform converts these disease-relevant T-cell receptors into a widely accessible therapeutic format. Together, these platforms aim to create a sustainable pipeline of new therapies targeting oncology, auto-immunity, and infectious disease.

Performance occurs in West Somerville, Massachusetts, with a period of performance from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.

Abstract

The broader/commercial impact of this small business innovation research (sbir) phase i project will be in the creation of new drugs to treat life-altering diseases. Despite leaps in medical technology, the world still grapples with infectious disease, cancer, and auto-immune disease. Auto-immune conditions and allergies are on the rise along with some types of cancers-particularly in young adults (e.g. colorectal cancers). The field needs new disease-specific targets that can be leveraged by current and next-generation therapeutic approaches. To achieve this goal, technologies to discover those disease-relevant targets and ways to exploit them in patients are essential. Among these targeting tools are t-cells: immune cells that are critical in the body?s defense against viral and bacterial infections as well as cancer. This sbir project focuses on the development of a platform for isolating t-cells specific to disease and a process which will take disease-specific t-cell receptors and convert them to a druggable, widely accessible format. Together, these two platforms may provide a system for mining diseases to develop a sustainable pipeline of new therapies. These therapies would contribute to the $200B oncology market, the $72B auto-immune market, and the $70B infectious disease market. The proposed project is focused on a method to discover drugs against new targets and a method to convert those potential drugs into therapeutics. This sbir project aims to develop a unique method of isolating disease-relevant t-cells. Tens of millions of different t-cells will be CO-cultured with diseased cells in microscopic compartments. T-cells that recognize the diseased cells are ?activated?. These activated cells will be identified and isolated to recover their associated disease-specific receptors. Specifically, the work here will focus on isolating rare, disease-reactive t-cell receptors (tcrs) from large pools of human t-cells: a step that is critical for the technology to be exploited for drug discovery against new targets. However, the tcrs that are encoded by the isolated t-cells are naturally expressed on the surface and are not fit for making adaptable, affordable, and easy-to-manufacture therapeutics. This sbir project will also strive to format these tcrs into a therapeutic modality that is manufacturable and deliverable to patients. These methods will leverage the latest in drug design technologies such as the use of artificial intelligence and high-throughput optimization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.