On August 9, 2019 NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) and CYTLIMIC Inc. reported that financing of 1.3 billion yen (around US$ 12 million at current rate) was completed through the achievement of the milestones, including the first IND filing of CYT001*, pursuant to the agreement with current shareholders; i.e., NEC Corporation, NEC Capital Solutions Limited, Fast Track Initiative, Inc., and SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd. In total, 2.3 billion yen (around US$ 21 million) has been raised since the establishment of CYTLIMIC in December 2016 (Press release, NEC, AUG 9, 2019, View Source [SID1234538959]).

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In recent years, Immune-Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICI), such as anti-PD-(L)1 drug, have been expanding their applications; However, a combination of ICI with other drugs are still needed for more than 70% of patients who don’t respond to ICI alone. Among those combination drugs, cancer vaccine is considered as a promising approach to turn "Cold tumors to Hot ones" and to make ICI work. CYT001 is designed to effectively turn "Cold tumors to Hot ones" with the AI-designed optimized shared-antigen peptides, and an optimized combination adjuvant of Poly ICLC (Hiltonol) and LAG-3Ig (Eftilagimod alpha or IMP321). The recent financing allows CYTLIMIC to conduct further clinical trials for the POC establishment of CYT001.