UbiVac Presents Personalized Cancer Vaccine Strategy at Cambridge Healthtech Institutes 6th Annual Immuno-Oncology Summit

September 4, 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patricia Pearson, [email protected]

Boston, MA—UbiVac, www.ubivac.com, a private, clinical-stage immuno-oncology company, has presented its personalized vaccine therapy for cancer treatment that integrates patient-specific neoantigens into UbiVac’s standard off-the-shelf DRibbles platform vaccine (DPV). This development allows for including an individualized immunotherapy treatment, together with a large spectrum of shared cancer antigens present in UbiVac’s lead cancer vaccine, for patients with various forms of cancer. UbiVac, a leader in developing the next generation of cancer vaccine treatment, presented today its latest platform that targets neoantigens that arise from mutations that are unique to each patient.

Neoantigens are viewed by many researchers as key to cancer treatment, because they are peptides, found uniquely on the surface of cancer cells only. Immune cells, generated by vaccination with neoantigens can then be directed to destroy the invading cancer cells containing the mutation.

The new platform was presented at Cambridge Healthtech Institutes 6th Annual Immuno-Oncology Summit here by Bernard A. Fox, PhD, chief executive officer of UbiVac. Dr. Fox summarized the company’s progress in establishing the effectiveness of their lead agent, DPV-001, at inducing both cytolytic and helper T cells and antibody-producing B cells that can target and destroy cancer cells.

The advantage of UbiVac’s newest strategy is that patients can begin receiving vaccinations with DPV-001, a vaccine that contains more than 100 shared cancer antigens, prior to obtaining the tumor biopsy used for neoantigen determination and vaccine production. These vaccinations can thus initiate and boost immune responses to shared cancer antigens expressed by the patients cancer months before their personalized vaccine is ready, accelerating the treatment process. Once the neoantigen vaccine is manufactured it is added to the treatment regimen.

In his presentation, Dr. Fox explained that personalized cancer treatment is more than simply sequencing a patient’s tumors to identify neoantigens that can be used as a vaccine. Personalized treatment involves an evaluation of the patient’s anti-cancer immunity, as a step to tailor therapy that may overcome the spectrum of inhibitors present in a patient’s cancer.

“We are excited to be adding patient-specific neoantigens to UbiVac’s DRibble vaccine platform,” Dr. Hong-Ming Hu, UbiVac’s chief scientific officer said. “This new strategy builds on a large body of preclinical and clinical research from our group and others and provides additional advantages to UbiVac’s DRibble platform vaccine (DPV) for more individualized cancer treatment.”

Dr. Fox added: “UbiVac believes that DRibble cancer vaccine technology is the ideal companion for combination immunotherapy and is complementary to the pipelines of major pharmaceutical companies currently developing immuno-oncology therapies. The therapy will soon be utilized in a combination immunotherapy trial for patients with advanced triple negative breast cancer.”

Award Number R-44CA 121612 from the National Cancer Institute supported the research and clinical trial of DPV-001 in patients with NSCLC. Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma accounts for about 85 percent of all lung cancers, which are largely unresponsive to chemotherapy.

UbiVac is a clinical stage Immuno-Oncology company engaged in development of immunotherapies to combat cancer. UbiVac’s DPV-001 recently completed a Phase I/II randomized multi-center adjuvant study for non-small cell lung cancer. UbiVac has ongoing preclinical and discovery programs using DRibble platform vaccines (DPV) and spread-defective Cytomegalovirus (sdCMV). Founded in Portland, Ore. In 2005 by Drs. Bernard A. Fox, Hong Ming Hu, and Bernard A. Fox III, MBA, the company is a spinout of the Robert W. Franz Cancer Center, Earle A. Chiles Research Institute at Providence Cancer Institute. In 2011 UbiVac, in cooperation with Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), created UbiVac CMV to license sdCMV.