Vaccibody in collaboration with prestige company Nektar Therapeutics
Our portolio company Vaccibody AS just entered a clinical collaboration with U.S. company Nektar Therapeutics.
The aim of the collaboration is to evaluate Vaccibody’s personalized cancer neoantigen vaccine, VB10.NEO, in combination with Nektar’s immune treatment NKTR-214, which is a CD-122-biased agonist.
In an interview with Norwegian financial paper “Finansavisen”, President and CSO in Vaccibody, Agnete Brunsvik Fredriksen, states that the agreement means a lot to Vaccibody, since Nektar Therapeutics is among the hottest immunotherapy companies around.
Nektar Therapeutics is registered on Nasdaq and has a market cap of $10 billion. In February 2018 Nektar entered a collaborative deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb to furter develop NKTR-214 .
Jonathan Zalevsky, CSO of Nektar Therapeutics, said:
Vaccibody technology holds the potential of combining a personalized cancer vaccine approach which is designed to drive antigen presentation with NKTR-214, which can drive specific clonal T cell expansion to vaccine epitopes. We look forward to working with Vaccibody to seek the advancement of this unique combination into the clinic.
Positive preclinical results
VB10.NEO is designed to specifically activate the patient’s immune system to tumour specific antigens, called neoantigens. NKTR-214 is designed to lead to further stimulation and proliferation of the immune cells. Preclinical results indicate a synergistic effect of VB10.NEO and NKTR-214 resulting in enhanced neoantigen-specific T cell responses. The clinical evaluation will take place in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. The first stage of the clinical trial will be a pilot study which will enroll 10 patients.
Nektar and Vaccibody each will maintain ownership of their own compounds in the clinical collaboration, and the two companies will jointly own clinical data that relate to the combination of VB10.NEO and NKTR-214. Under the terms of the agreement and following the completion of the pilot study, the two companies will evaluate next steps for development of the combination regimen.
Martin Bonde, CEO of Vaccibody, commented:
We are very pleased to be joining forces with Nektar Therapeutics in this new clinical research collaboration. The preclinical in-vivo studies of NKTR-214 in combination with Vaccibody’s neoantigen vaccines generated very promising results. We look forward to further evaluate the Vaccibody neoantigen vaccine in combination with NKTR-214 in the clinic. The combination is designed to improve clinical outcome in patients that need additional help to elicit a strong, neoantigen-focused immune response and thus such combination may broaden the patient population benefitting from either therapy alone.
Facts:
About VB10.NEO
VB10.16, is a Vaccibody proprietary therapeutic DNA vaccine which uses private neoantigens for the personalized treatment of cancer patients. A phase I/IIa neoantigen clinical trial is currently enrolling patients with locally advanced or metastatic melanoma, non-small cell lung carcinoma, clear renal cell carcinoma as well as urothelial or squamous cell carcinoma off head and neck.
About Vaccibody AS
Vaccibody is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel immunotherapies. The company is a leader in the rapidly developing field of individualized cancer neoantigen vaccines and is using the Vaccibody technology to generate best-in-class therapeutics to treat cancers with a high unmet medical need. A phase I/IIa neoantigen clinical trial is now enrolling patients with locally advanced or metastatic melanoma, non-small cell lung carcinoma, clear renal cell carcinoma as well as urothelial or squamous cell carcinoma off head and neck. Vaccibody’s front runner program (VB10.16) is a therapeutic DNA vaccine against HPV16 induced pre-malignancies and malignancies. The first-in-human study (phase I/IIa), which is now fully enrolled, evaluates the safety and immunogenicity of VB10.16 in women with high grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (HSIL; CIN 2/3).
Source: Vaccibody and Finansavisen