AURA

Aura Biosciences, Inc. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company. The Company is engaged in developing precision immunotherapies to treat solid tumors designed to preserve the function of the afflicted organ with cancer. It is developing a pipeline of virus-like drug conjugates (VDCs), a class of drugs with a dual mechanism of action, that promote cancer cell death by both the delivery of the cytotoxic payload to generate acute necrosis and activation of a secondary immune mediated response. Its lead candidate, bel-sar, is in late-stage clinical development for the treatment of patients with primary choroidal melanoma, and other ocular oncology indications, as well as in early-stage clinical development in bladder cancer. Bel-sar consists of a human papillomavirus (HPV)-derived virus-like particle (VLP), conjugated to hundreds of infrared laser-activated molecules. It is evaluating the bel-sar in a Phase III CoMpass trial for the first line treatment of early-stage choroidal melanoma.