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Quietly, and often without fanfare, a new generation of
platforms is emerging that doesn’t treat tolerization as an
inevitability. These technologies challenge the central
assumption that immune rejection is something to work
around. Instead, they offer a new premise: build the drug
to be welcome from the start.
These efforts aren’t confined to academic immunology
labs. They’re appearing in early-stage biotech pipelines,
translational medicine programs, and preclinical trials
across multiple therapeutic areas. They don’t just target the
disease. They engage the immune context.
Here are three key platform categories redefining what
biologics can be
1. Oral Biologics: Delivering Tolerance Through
the Gut
For years, oral delivery of protein therapeutics was
considered impossible. The gut was viewed as a graveyard
for biologics—hostile pH, degrading enzymes, leaky
absorption. But that thinking is changing. And the gut is
being redefined—not as a barrier, but as an opportunity.
Modern oral biologic platforms use:
• Enteric coatings to protect drugs from stomach
acid
• Nanoparticle encapsulation to shield the protein
cargo
• Mucoadhesive carriers to enhance antigen
sampling by mucosal dendritic cells
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