- Latest data support ability of oral T-cell immunotherapy platform to stimulate anti-tumor immunity against PD-L1 antigen
- Anti-leukemia activity of VXM10 highlighted
Basel (Switzerland) and Mannheim (Germany), October 17, 2017 – VAXIMM AG, a Swiss/German biotech company focused on developing oral T-cell immunotherapies, today announced that preclinical data with its oral T‑cell immunotherapy platform, including one preclinical development candidate, VXM10, are being presented at the upcoming “AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics: Discovery, Biology, and Clinical Applications” being held October 26-30, 2017 in Philadelphia, PA, USA. The poster will be presented during Poster Session B in session category “Tumor Immunology Targets” on Sunday October 29, 12:30 PM – 4:00 PM in Hall E. The abstracts are available here.
“Despite the strong progress that has been achieved in developing cancer treatments that can direct the body’s immune system, effective solutions are still needed to deliver (neo)antigens to the antigen-presenting cells and overcome the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment that often prevents the eradication of the cancer in patients,” said Heinz Lubenau, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer of VAXIMM. “The data being presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC conference continue to build support that VAXIMM’s oral T‑cell immunotherapies have the potential to break immune tolerance and trigger anti-tumor immunity. We already have one compound, VXM01, in clinical testing and look forward to advancing VXM10 and our neoantigen program into the clinic.”
The poster, “Live attenuated oral Salmonella platform for effective targeting of multiple tumor-associated epitopes and PD‑L1,” summarizes the immunogenicity and anti-leukemia activity of VXM10, transformed with a eukaryotic expression plasmid encoding the murine programmed death-ligand 1 (PD‑L1) protein in an animal model. Multiple oral administrations of VXM10m were generally well tolerated, and no toxicity nor body weight loss were observed. Oral administration of VXM10 produced a strong anti-tumor effect in the FBL‑3 leukemia model, with a 100% survival rate 80 days after leukemia challenge in those groups given the highest doses. All long-term surviving mice resisted a re-challenge with FBL‑3 cells, demonstrating that vaccination with VXM10m generated a potent memory T‑cell response against the leukemia cells. Importantly, full leukemia control was achieved in both prophylactic and therapeutic settings.
Additionally, various polyepitope vaccines encoding dominant epitopes from VEGFR2, Mesothelin, WT1, CEA, and Ovalbumin, induced a significant systemic immunogenicity for up to 6 of 9 epitopes, 10 days after vaccination of healthy mice via the oral route. This study provides further evidence that VAXIMM’s oral T‑cell vaccination platform can not only be employed to stimulate anti-tumor immunity against the antigen of the immune checkpoint regulatory protein PD‑L1, but also against T‑cell epitopes encoded by polyepitope constructs. These data pave the way for advancing the development of VXM10 and neoantigen-based vaccines into clinical development.
About VAXIMM:
VAXIMM is a privately held, Swiss/German biotech company that is developing oral T-cell immunotherapies for patients suffering from cancer. VAXIMM’s product platform is based on a live attenuated, safe, orally available bacterial vaccine strain, which is modified to stimulate patients’ cytotoxic T-cells to target specific structures of the tumor. VAXIMM’s lead product candidate, oral VXM01, activates killer cells targeting tumor-specific vasculature and certain immune-suppressive cells, thereby increasing immune cell infiltration in solid tumors. VXM01 is currently in clinical development for several tumor types, including pancreatic, colorectal and brain cancer. In addition to VXM01, VAXIMM has a pipeline of complementary development candidates targeting different tumor structures. VAXIMM’s investors include BB Biotech Ventures, Merck Ventures, Sunstone Capital and BioMed Partners. VAXIMM AG is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Its wholly owned subsidiary, VAXIMM GmbH, located in Mannheim, Germany, is responsible for the Company’s development activities. For more information, please see www.vaximm.com.
Contact:
VAXIMM AG
Dr. Matthias Schroff (CEO)
Tel.: +49 621 8359 687 0
Email: info@vaximm.com
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MC Services AG
Katja Arnold, Laurie Doyle
Tel: +49 89 210228 0
Email: vaximm@mc-services.eu
