Our unique platform technology seeks to harness and promote the body’s immune system against cancerous tumours.
Our product pipeline includes an off-the-shelf (allogeneic) cell therapy CAR T drug Azer-Cel (azercabtagene zapreleucel) which targets CD19 to attack blood cancer.
Our pipeline also includes an Oncolytic Virus and B-Cell Immunotherapies aimed at treating a variety of cancers in combination with standard of care drugs and immunotherapies. We are supported by a leading team of international cancer experts with extensive experience in developing new cancer therapies.
CAR T cell therapy for the treatment of cancer is one of the breakthrough innovations of modern medicine.
Cancer immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to fight the disease. Currently approved chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies have demonstrated dramatic efficacy in some cancers. However, these patient-derived, autologous CAR T products introduce several important limitations to patient care including patient access, cost, and safety concerns.
Imugene has licensed from Precision Biosciences a near term pivotal stage, off-the-shelf (allogeneic) cell therapy CAR T drug Azer-Cel (azercabtagene zapreleucel) which targets CD19 to attack blood cancer.
OnCARlytics is a novel and effective combination immunotherapy utilizing the CF33 oncolytic virus to deliver de novo cell surface expression of CD19 antigen (CF33-CD19) promoting CD19-CAR T cell anti-tumor responses against solid tumors.
The combination immunotherapy, onCARlytics, unleashes a CD19-expressing oncolytic virus CF33-CD19 to target and eradicate solid tumours that are otherwise difficult to treat with CAR T therapy alone.
Oncolytic viruses are naturally occurring, or genetically modified viruses that infect, replicate in and eventually kill cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. Our oncolytic virus known as CF33, is a chimeric vaccinia derived through a recombination of favourable genetic sequences from multiple pox virus strains to generate a new, safer and more potent virus. A wealth of pre-clinical data shows CF33 is selectively tumor targeting, self-amplifying, minimal side effects, effective for both primary and metastic tumors as well as recurrent tumors, synergistic with standard of care therapies and emerging novel therapies, stimulates immune system to recognize the tumours.
Our PD-1 B-cell immunotherapy, known as PD1-Vaxx, aims to induce the body to produce polyclonal antibodies that block PD-1 signalling, and thus produce an anticancer effect similar to Keytruda, Opdivo and the other immune checkpoint inhibitor monoclonal antibodies, that have transformed treatment for a range of cancers. PD1-Vaxx has shown encouraging potential in preclinical studies, including outperforming an industry-standard mouse anti-PD-1 antibody in a mouse model of colorectal cancer.
We have two HER2 B-cell immunotherapies in clinical trials, one from Ohio State University (OSU) known as B-Vaxx in Phase 2 clinical trial, and another from the University of Vienna Medical School known as HER-Vaxx in a Phase 1b/2 clinical trial. In earlier Phase I studies, both immunotherapies showed that they stimulated production of polyclonal antibodies against HER2, with encouraging indications of efficacy, thus providing proof of concept (PoC) for the B-cell immuno-therapy technology as well as suggesting therapeutic potential in HER2+ cancers.
Publications
View a selection of key publications from:
• City of Hope Cancer Centre, by Dr Saul Priceman, Ph.D;
• City of Hope Cancer Centre, by Professor Yuman Fong;
• Ohio State University, by Professor Pravin Kaumaya;
• Medical University of Vienna, by Professor Ursula Wiedermann.