Autoimmunity Is Complex.
The Answer Has Been Inside Us All Along.
Available standard therapies either broadly suppress all immune system cells and function broadly or block single molecules hoping for disease control. We asked a different question: what if the body's natural healing cells could be taught to target disease specific immune abnormalities with precision? That question is the foundation of the solution Zafer Therapeutics is building.
The Problem
Autoimmune Disease Is Complex. Treatment Should Be, Too.
Systemic autoimmune diseases activate many immune pathways and cell types at once, yet most current treatments still attack a single target or broadly suppress the entire immunity. Patients endure toxic regimens, high infection risk, and frequent relapses, with many never reaching durable remission.
Despite decades of effort with naive MSCs, clinical results have been inconsistent, suggesting that natural healing cells fail not because they lack power, but because they lack the right training for each specific disease.
Our Solution
Zafer Therapeutics is building an MSC-based cell therapy platform that programs naive mesenchymal stromal cells in a precision-designed artificial disease environment so they return to the body as targeted anti-inflammatory therapies.
Training Natural Healing Cells to Fight Autoimmune Disease.
How Our Platform Works
Natural Healing Cells
Inside every person are natural healing cells (MSCs) that can modulate the immune system and support tissue repair, but their therapeutic potential has remained under‑realized.
Precision Programming
Our platform takes naive or "naked" MSCs and exposes them to a precision‑designed environment that mimics the molecular and immune signature of a specific autoimmune disease, such as a "lupus programming environment" or "vasculitis programming environment."
Targeted Therapy
In this controlled setting, the cells learn how to respond: they upregulate anti‑inflammatory and tissue‑protective pathways and downregulate damaging inflammatory programs, effectively becoming "anti‑lupus" or "anti‑vasculitis" cell products.
HXB‑319: Opening the Door to a New Class of Autoimmune Cell Therapies
HXB-319 is our lead programmed MSC therapy, initially developed for ANCA-associated vasculitis as a rare-disease beachhead where unmet need is high and regulatory pathways can be more efficient.
Built on a training environment shaped by lupus biology and interferon-driven inflammation, HXB-319 is designed to calm pathologic inflammation, protect vessels and organs, and move patients toward durable remission.
Beyond a Single Shot
A Replicatable Platform for Disease‑Programmed Cell Therapies
Lupus as prototype: We use systemic lupus erythematosus as the prototype systemic autoimmune disease to design our training environment, then extend that logic to other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases.
Modular Disease Programming
The same core training process is reused across different “disease mimickers,” allowing us to create a pipeline of disease-specific MSC products from a shared platform.
Scalable and Allogeneic
Our allogeneic, off-the-shelf MSC platform is built for GMP manufacturing, repeatable dosing, and expansion into multiple autoimmune indications.
Building the Next Generation of Precision Cell Therapy
Zafer Theraputics brings together expertise in pediatric rheumatology, immunopathology, and biotech leadership to turn an advanced scientific insight into a scalable therapeutic platform.
Hulya Bukulmez, MD
Founder & Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Bukulmez is a Professor of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and a practicing pediatric rheumatologist, serving as Vice Chair of Pediatric Research at MetroHealth. She is the inventor of the core intellectual property behind Zafer’s precision-designed disease environments and leads scientific strategy, disease biology, and translational development for HXB-319 and future programmed MSC products.
Steven Emancipator, MD Co-Founder & VP of Research
Dr. Emancipator is Professor Emeritus of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University and former Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Cleveland VA Medical Center. He brings deep expertise in immunopathology and preclinical model design, guiding in-life validation, mechanistic studies, and biomarker strategy that demonstrate how trained MSCs outperform naive cells in autoimmune models.
Andrew Caprariello
Interim Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Caprariello serves as Interim CEO, drawing on prior roles as Founder of Cap Consulting, CEO of 4P-Pharma USA, Director of Biology at Convelo Therapeutics, and Senior Consultant at Wave Strategy. He oversees corporate strategy, partnerships, and fundraising to advance Zafer’s platform from preclinical proof-of-concept in lupus-inspired models to first-in-human studies in ANCA-associated vasculitis.
Partner With Us
We welcome conversations with investors, clinicians, and translational research partners who share our vision of turning trained MSCs into a new standard of care for systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases.
General Inquiries
info@zafertherapeutics.com
Business Development & Partnerships Andrew Caprariello, andrew@zafertherapeutics.com
Scientific & Clinical Collaborations
Hulya Bukulmez, MD, hulya@zafertx.com
