On November 11, 2020 Achilles Therapeutics Limited ("Achilles"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing personalised cell therapies targeting clonal neoantigens, a novel class of tumour target, reported the decision by the European Patent Office ("EPO") to grant European patent EP3288581B, which covers the treatment of cancer using T cells that have been selectively expanded to target clonal neoantigens (Press release, Achilles Therapeutics, NOV 11, 2020, https://achillestx.com/achilles-therapeutics-announces-grant-of-european-patent-covering-use-of-selectively-expanded-t-cells-targeting-clonal-neoantigens-for-the-treatment-of-cancer/ [SID1234570569]).
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The patent is assigned to Cancer Research Technology and licensed exclusively to Achilles in certain fields. The inventors of EP3288581B include three of Achilles’ co-founders, Sergio Quezada, Chief Scientific Officer, Karl Peggs, Chief Medical Officer (effective January 2021) and Professor Charles Swanton, a Royal Society Napier Professor of Cancer and Chief Clinician at Cancer Research UK as well as Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL.
A related patent was granted in Singapore in August 2020 with equivalent applications pending in multiple countries, including the United States. Many patent offices worldwide consider the status of equivalent European cases to be highly relevant to their patent granting decision.
"This is a significant and exciting decision by the EPO," said Dr. Iraj Ali, Chief Executive Officer of Achilles. "We are using Achilles’ innovative platform to rapidly advance our therapies for the treatment of solid tumours and have two ongoing clonal neoantigen T cell (cNeT) clinical trials; the CHIRON trial in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the THETIS trial in patients with recurrent or metastatic malignant melanoma."
Tony Hickson, Cancer Research UK’s Chief Business Officer, said: "Achilles has made significant advances in the development of T cell therapies for cancer, and we are delighted to see the strides that they have taken since they were founded in 2016."