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Prima BioMed Ltd, a leading immuno-oncology company, announced that it has entered into a new collaboration agreement with Japan’s CYTLIMIC, a recent spin off from NEC Corporation (NEC), to test a cancer peptide vaccine in combination with IMP321.
Under the new Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) Prima will provide IMP321 for a formulation development targeting a new pre-clinical and clinical development study to be conducted by CYTLIMIC. The development will be funded by CYTLIMIC and the MTA will be revenue generating for Prima
Prima’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Frédéric Triebel, said: “When IMP321 is used as an adjuvant to a cancer vaccine to boost tumour-specific CD8 T cells, it is used at a very low dose to get a local effect at the vaccine injection site. The use of IMP321 as an adjuvant to a vaccine is therefore different from Prima’s other combination approaches where higher doses are used to boost Antigen Presenting Cells (APCs) in the whole body. It is very encouraging that CYTLIMIC has committed further resources to this exciting research, based on several positive published studies using IMP321 as an adjuvant to cancer vaccines.”
CYTLIMIC’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr Shun Doi, said: “I am pleased with the progress to enter into this collaboration with Prima BioMed, which follows the successful research collaboration among NEC Corporation, Yamaguchi University and Prima BioMed, to realize an innovative peptide vaccine for cancer immunotherapy.”
In May 2015 Prima entered into a collaboration agreement with NEC to supply IMP321 for a preclinical study investigating IMP321 in combination with a therapeutic vaccine for different carcinoma types, to be developed at Yamaguchi University. Pre-clinical work demonstrated that low dose IMP321 co-injected with a peptide vaccine is safe. This resulted in a decision to progress to clinical development and now the foundation of CYTLIMIC by NEC, together with leading Japanbased venture capital firms.
