Sotio’s cell platform, called DCVAC, starts with a patient’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells, which are grown into dendritic cells (DCs). In parallel, the company uses a proprietary device to pressurize tumor cells from cell lines, and the right amount of HHP makes the cells more immunogenic. The company picks “cell lines with expression profiles that show the most overlap with a patient’s tumor profile,” says Sotio’s CTO, Luděk Sojka, PhD. Then, adding the HHP-killed tumor cells to a patient’s DCs makes them express a variety of tumor antigens on their surface.