Featured invention - VaccDC Therapeutics - Dendritic Cell Vaccine Immunotherapy

Executive Summary - VaccDC Therapeutics

An estimated 24,000 adults will be diagnosed with malignant brain cancer this year. The 5-year survival rate for people with cancerous brain tumors is approximately 35%. The standard of care for brain tumors is surgery followed by chemotherapy or radiation therapy. However, residual cancer cells always remain and disease recurrence is almost inevitable. Patients are also invariably adversely impacted by side effects from toxic chemicals used in chemotherapy or the high-energy radiation. There is an unmet need to develop effective therapeutic strategies that combat malignant brain cancers.

In recent years, there has been increased focus on harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight cancers. Dendritic cells (DCs) are a component of the immune system and function as antigen presenting cells. They process proteins (antigens) from sources such as cancer cells and present them to T lymphocytes in the correct context, which allows for the activation of a robust immune response and elimination of any cancer cells exhibiting those antigens.

Vaccination with DCs involves the collection of the patient’s own DCs, loading these cells with antigens from the tumor and re-introducing these cells into the patient to present these tumor antigens to T cells initiating an immune response against the cancer. Limitations include expanding the DC population to sufficient numbers and the complex methods used to introduce the tumor proteins into these cells, which are critical for DCs to efficiently present these proteins to T cells.

The inventors have patented a method to generate and expand a particular subset of DCs, which addresses the issue of availability. Additionally, this type of DC is easy to load with tumor antigen and is able to elicit a robust immune response in pre-clinical testing.

The cancer vaccine market is expected to grow at a vigorous annual rate of 20.7% and reach a CAGR of 6.32% between 2019 and 2025. We seek funding for the IND application, Phase I clinical trials and for future commercialization of this patented technology. The estimated cost of Phase I clinical testing is USD $5 million.

We also welcome individuals with start-up experience to join our team.

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