Closely held Micoy Therapeutics is advancing novel, first-in-class therapeutics to target harmful autoantibodies that induce immunodeficiency by inhibiting immune signaling molecules—type I interferons—which are critical to the body’s defense against infections.
“Interferons protect the body by activating hundreds of genes that ramp up immune defenses to prevent pathogens from multiplying and keep tumors in check. We have engineered several decoy therapies that show promise in blocking harmful autoantibodies from depleting interferons and restoring normal immune balance,” Prem Premsrirut, MD, PhD, CEO and executive director of Micoy, says in an interview with BioTuesdays.
Dr. Premsrirut explains that autoantibodies are malfunctioning antibodies that mistakenly attack the body’s own proteins, tissues, and organs, leaving individuals more vulnerable to severe viral infections. These attacks often go undetected until symptoms appear, and irreversible damage is done. This damage can lead to autoimmune diseases, including Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and lupus, for example. Autoimmune conditions affect more than 15 million Americans.
Micoy’s innovative diagnostic and therapeutic platform identifies and neutralizes specific interferon autoantibodies, helping to restore natural immune function.
“Our decoy therapies specifically sponge harmful autoantibodies without activating everything that interferon normally does, because studies have shown that giving patients too much interferon can also be detrimental,” Dr. Premsrirut notes. “There are many interferon-based therapies on the market that are poorly tolerated. Our goal is to make our decoy therapy resemble interferon closely—but engineer it to be inert—so that it can’t interact with downstream receptors, thereby avoiding harmful side effects while still protecting the immune system.”
Dr. Premsrirut highlights that interferon deficiency is also associated with cancer. A lack of signaling impairs immune surveillance of tumors, giving cancer cells more opportunity to grow unchecked. “Interferons are the body’s first responders. They fight off pathogens and keep tumors in check.”
Recent studies suggest that more than 120 million people worldwide carry autoantibodies that may impair their immune systems. “Nearly one in 15 people aged 65 and older carry interferon autoantibodies,” Dr. Premsrirut says. “As we age, the presence of autoantibodies tends to increase, while our ability to respond to pathogens declines.”
But it’s not just age-related. These interferon autoantibodies can be found across all age groups. During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers discovered that nearly 20% of patients with life-threatening disease or fatal outcomes carried harmful autoantibodies that blocked key immune proteins.
“Although we’ve known about interferon autoantibodies for decades, they were thought to be benign with no contribution toward disease. The COVID-19 pandemic changed that. With millions infected at once, we observed a striking pattern—patients with these autoantibodies were 100 times more likely to be hospitalized.”
Beyond viral threats like COVID-19, influenza, and herpes simplex, Dr. Premsrirut points out that autoantibodies may also undermine cancer treatments. Many chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs depend on interferon signaling to activate immune cells against tumors. The hypothesis is that interferon-blocking autoantibodies can sabotage this process.
“There is a big interplay between viral infection and cancer,” she contends. “We are actively investigating whether blocking interferon signaling leads to therapy resistance. In fact, many studies show that patients with higher levels of type I interferons tend to have better cancer prognoses.”
Dr. Premsrirut, also an associate research professor at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, is collaborating with the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah to identify patients who do not respond to immunotherapy and subsequently develop more aggressive cancers. “We’re testing whether these patients have higher levels of autoantibodies compared to those who responded well to treatment.”
The company is also expanding preclinical studies in animals to examine whether suppression of interferons by autoantibodies correlates with more aggressive disease and resistance to therapy.
“We’ve already seen in our models that blocking interferon signaling does cause therapy resistance,” Dr. Premsrirut says. “If tumors delete their interferon genes, they become ‘immune cold’—meaning the immune system no longer recognizes or attacks them.”
She argues that this is essentially equivalent to being genetically predisposed to therapy resistance. “Autoantibodies can cause the same kind of immune failure as a genetic mutation.”
Micoy has also developed a diagnostic breakthrough—a blood test to identify people who carry harmful interferon autoantibodies.
“Why give cancer patients drugs they may not respond to?” Dr. Premsrirut asks. “If we want to prevent therapy resistance, we first need to identify which patients have autoantibodies. That’s why we’re developing a minimally invasive, rapid point-of-care blood test.”
The vision is to screen all newly diagnosed cancer patients. If autoantibodies are detected, clinicians could pretreat with Micoy’s decoy therapy to neutralize them—before administering standard of care treatment.
Micoy’s testing solution, currently under review by New York State Department of Health, represents a $1 billion market opportunity. The company anticipates commercializing the test by 2027. Inexpensive and scalable, it is designed for broad use across clinical trials and hospitals worldwide.
Micoy is now seeking between $500,000 and $1 million in pre-seed funding to generate proof-of-concept data in cancer. An additional $8 million in seed financing would support advancing its lead therapeutic candidate to a Phase 2-ready stage within three years.
The company has a multidisciplinary team bridging academia and biotech, including a close collaboration with Dr. Jean-Laurent Cassanova at Rockefeller University, an internationally renowned pioneer in the genetic basis of infectious disease.
Addressing the need to understand autoimmune etiology and the future of immune diagnostics, Dr. Premsrirut emphasizes that viruses are clever—able to trick the immune system into producing autoantibodies through a mechanism called molecular mimicry. Micoy has developed a proprietary algorithm to identify structural similarities between viral and human proteins, allowing researchers to predict which autoantibodies are pathogenic and which are benign.
“In cancer, we’ve evolved to use molecular diagnostics—genetic markers help us predict risk and guide treatment. Autoimmune disease needs to follow that path,” Dr. Premsrirut argues. “Right now, there are nearly 100 clinically defined autoimmune diseases, but most are only diagnosed after irreversible damage occurs.”
Micoy believes the key is early detection. Some individuals produce autoantibodies every time they are infected, but normally the immune system has a cleanup mechanism to remove them. In roughly 5% of the population, that system fails—due to genetic mutations or immune dysregulation—allowing autoantibodies to linger and accumulate over time.
“When we analyzed SARS-CoV-2, we found extensive structural overlap with the human proteome. This helps explain why Long COVID may be driven by persistent autoantibodies. We believe similar phenomena occur with Epstein-Barr virus, CMV, and others—it just wasn’t obvious before COVID because we didn’t have millions of cases at once.”
Understanding etiology—what triggers autoantibody production and why some people can’t clear them—could allow scientists to predict, prevent, or even reverse autoimmune disease progression, Dr. Premsrirut suggests.
“Our goal is to map out the autoantibody landscape—to determine which autoantibodies are dangerous, how they arise, and how to neutralize them,” she concludes.
Micoy believes it is on the cusp of the next healthcare revolution—revealing the common roots of autoimmune disease and cancer. By advancing targeted diagnostics and engineered decoy therapies, the company aims to transform how immune disorders are detected and treated—before damage is done.
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