Ygion Biomedical GmbH has completed a series A financing round of €15 million (US$ 16.3 million) to support the development of individualized neoantigen-based cancer vaccines.
Immunotherapy-based cancer vaccines could permanently kill tumors by stimulating immune cells in multiple ways. At the 27th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT), researchers presented their advances in this field with different techniques in the scientific symposium “Novel nucleic acid and cell-based vaccines for cancer,” organized by the infectious diseases and vaccines committee.
Cancer vaccines specialist Infinitopes Precision Immunomics Ltd. announced the closing of a £12.8 million (US$16.1 million) seed round and outlined plans to start a phase I/IIa study of the lead program in the third quarter of this year.
Corner Therapeutics Inc. raised $54 million in a series A financing to create vaccines to protect against cancer and infectious diseases by helping the immune system engineer T cells. The company’s core interest is in advancements in immunotherapy through direct manipulation of T cells, which are the “keys to the kingdom for any cancer therapy,” Nick Seaver, Corner’s chief business officer, told BioWorld.
The phase II Initium study of Ultimovacs ASA’s therapeutic cancer vaccine in treating unresectable or metastatic malignant melanoma did not meet the primary endpoint. The company framed the loss by saying the UV-1 vaccine still has other indications where it could succeed.
PDC*line Pharma SA has received €4.7 million (US$5.1 million) in public funding as part of a €12.5 million project to apply its allogeneic leukemia-derived dendritic cell line in the development of personalized vaccines for treating colorectal cancer.
Voltron Therapeutics Inc., a portfolio company of Lucius Partners LLC, has finalized the protocol for a preclinical dose-ranging efficacy study of VTX-0P4, a protein-based cancer vaccine targeting prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA), a key target in the treatment of prostate cancer.
IPSirius SAS, an early stage French immuno-oncology firm, hopes to obtain a clinical trial authorization from the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Products Agency next year, to enable it to move its novel therapeutic cancer vaccine into a first-in-human trial in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer.
Later this year, Mendus AB plans to move its allogeneic cell-based cancer vaccine, vididencel, into a phase II combination trial with oral azacitidine to evaluate the regimen’s potential as a maintenance therapy in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
IPSirius SAS, an early stage French immuno-oncology firm, hopes to obtain a clinical trial authorization from the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Products Agency next year, to enable it to move its novel therapeutic cancer vaccine into a first-in-human trial in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer.
