Vaccitech has signed a partnership with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) to clinically advance VTP-600, the formerā€™s immunotherapy vaccine candidate, for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

According to the terms of the agreement, CRUKā€™s Centre for Drug Development will be responsible for sponsoring and managing a Phase I/IIA clinical study of the drug combined with the current standard of care and first line treatment of chemotherapy and programmed cell death-1 inhibitors.

VTP-600 has been developed by the oncology-focused collaboration Vaccitech Oncology (VOLT), which is between the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, a network of cancer research scientists, and Vaccitech.

It leverages Vaccitechā€™s proprietary viral vector technology platform, comprising of Chimp Adenovirus and Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA). It creates two viral vectors, which are engineered to express tumour-associated antigens MAGE-A3 and NY-ESO-1 ā€“ these two targets were previously validated by the Ludwig Institute.

The VTP-600 vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to produce sustained levels of CD8+ T cells for cancers that produce the two targeted antigens, which includes NSCLC.

Vaccitech CEO Bill Enright said: ā€œWe are delighted to enter into a clinical development partnership with two of the worldā€™s most prestigious cancer research institutions.

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ā€œWe believe that this partnership is an important validation of our prime boost platformā€™s utility in oncology as well as infectious disease.ā€

Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research executive vice-president for technology development Jonathan Skipper added: ā€œPrevious clinical trials of experimental cancer vaccines targeting MAGE and NY-ESO antigens have demonstrated that these antigens are highly specific to cancer and capable of eliciting strong immune responses.

ā€œWe believe that Vaccitechā€™s highly effective T cell induction platform should provide a potent immunotherapeutic that, in combination with checkpoint blockade, is capable of inducing sustained levels of cancer antigen-specific CD8+ T cells and the desired therapeutic effect in patients.ā€

CRUK director of drug development Dr Nigel Blackburn commented: ā€œThis partnership with VOLT is an important step to help accelerate this promising immunotherapy and could help more people survive lung cancer, which remains very hard to treat.

ā€œThis novel approach using a modified adenovirus to prime the immune system and alert it to the presence of cancer cells could offer a completely new way to treat the disease.ā€

VOLT will hold the option to license the results of the CRUK study in order to continue the clinical development and commercialise VTP-600.