Armoring Living Medicines to Fight Cancer
Inside a tumor, the environment is so hostile that immune cells sent to fight cancer are destroyed before they can do their job. It's like sending firefighters into a burning building without protective gear.
Liseva Bio arms natural killer cells — the immune system's own cancer fighters — with the protection they need to survive inside tumors — and the capability to extinguish it.
Our proprietary platform, called Liseva Cellular Armor Technology (LCAT), gives NK cells the resilience to withstand the hostile conditions that destroy standard cell therapies.
The Cancers We're Fighting
Our mission is to bring effective immune cell therapy to the cancers that have been hardest to treat
Ovarian Cancer
Our Lead Indication
Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers affecting women. Most patients respond well to initial treatment, but the disease almost always returns — and when it does, it becomes resistant to chemotherapy and largely unresponsive to available immunotherapies. For these patients, options are limited and survival is measured in months. They deserve a better answer.
Liseva Bio is developing NK cell therapy specifically for this setting. Our armored NK cells are built to withstand the hostile ovarian tumor environment — and our delivery approach concentrates them directly at the disease site where they are needed most.
Peritoneal Cancers
Advantage in the Abdominal Cavity
Ovarian, colorectal, gastric, and pancreatic cancers can all spread within the abdominal cavity — a space called the peritoneum. This spreading makes these cancers especially difficult to treat with conventional therapies, which struggle to reach the disease where it lives.
Our delivery approach is designed specifically for this environment. By delivering NK cells directly into the abdominal cavity, we can concentrate immune cells at the disease site — giving them the best possible chance to find and attack cancer cells before the tumor environment overwhelms them.
Solid Tumors Broadly
A Long-Term Vision
The hostile conditions that destroy immune cells inside tumors — lack of oxygen, nutrient deprivation, and chemical suppression — are not unique to ovarian cancer. They are a shared feature of solid tumors broadly, and they are the reason cell therapy has struggled to deliver on its promise in cancer's hardest fights.
We believe our platform has the potential to help patients across many types of difficult-to-treat cancers. Our long-term goal is to put the immune system's most powerful cancer fighters to work against any tumor, anywhere in the body.
VISION
Our Vision
Cell therapy has already changed the lives of patients with blood cancers — achieving remission rates that were unthinkable a generation ago. But the cancers that kill the most people, the solid tumors, have been left behind.
We believe the missing ingredient has always been protection, not power. Natural killer cells are already capable of recognizing and destroying cancer. They just need to survive long enough to prove it.
Liseva Bio exists to solve that problem — and to keep solving it until effective immune cell therapy is available to every patient who needs it, regardless of what cancer they are fighting.
We are a Rhode Island-based biotechnology company supported by the Rhode Island Life Science Hub, founded by a scientist who has spent his career turning cell therapy ideas into medicines — and who lost someone he loved to the disease he is now working to defeat.
Our Science
Life-Saving Solutions
Built for Endurance - Standard immune cells are sprinters — powerful in a short burst but quickly exhausted. Liseva Bio's armored NK cells are built like long-distance runners, designed to keep fighting through the hostile conditions that destroy standard cell therapies.
Protection Before the Fight - Our platform prepares NK cells before they enter the body — arming them with the resilience they need to survive inside tumors and keep fighting long after standard NK cells have stopped.
The Results In laboratory testing, our armored NK cells killed 46 times more cancer cells than standard NK cells under the same hostile conditions. Critically, this advantage persists through freezing and thawing — meaning our technology can be manufactured in advance, stored, and shipped to hospitals around the world, ready to reach patients in need. These results are from early stage laboratory studies and have not yet been evaluated in human clinical trials.
Practical by Design No genetic engineering required. Designed for off-the-shelf manufacturing. Delivered directly to the disease site — concentrating immune cells exactly where they are needed most.