On April 16, 2012 TapImmune reported that it has signed an Exclusive Agreement with the Mayo Foundation for Education & Research, Rochester, MN, to License a proprietary MHC Class I HER2/neu antigen technology (Press release TapImmune, APR 16, 2012, View Source [SID:1234501504]).
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This antigen was discovered in the laboratory of Dr. Keith Knutson at the Mayo Clinic. In contrast to Class I antigens in clinical testing this novel antigen is naturally produced in the intracellular proteasome and presented to T-cells as the MHC Class I peptide complex. Scientific details of this new work will be presented by Andrea Henle of Dr. Knutson’s lab at the Annual Meeting of The American Association of Immunologists to be held in Boston, MA, May 4-6, 2012.
Dr. Knutson stated, "Our main goal is to translate new technologies into meaningful treatments for patients with cancer. I think that this novel antigen represents a new advancement toward achieving that goal of developing more effective HER-2/neu-targeted immune therapies, which could be used to treat many HER-2/neu expressing cancers to improve patient care.
Mark Reddish, Vice President, Development, at TapImmune stated, "This technology is a good fit with our TAP expression systems, and adds an important and previously missing component to the field of Her2/neu vaccines. Although some peptide targets may well ‘fit’ as class I binding peptides, the fact is that natural CD8 targets need to be processed by the cells proteasome if they are to serve as functional targets for killing. Dr Knutson’s group have been focused on the identification of functionally relevant targets and this represents a step forward for developing truly effective immunotherapies that target her2/neu."
TapImmune is currently collaborating with Dr Knutson and colleagues on the clinical evaluation of a set of proprietary MHC Class II HER2/neu antigens in breast cancer patients and has the Exclusive Option to license this technology. Phase I studies are due to commence shortly.
Dr Glynn Wilson, Chairman & CEO at TapImmune added, " We believe that the scientific advance of this new Her2/neu antigen technology coupled with the Class II antigens and our own TAP expression technology puts us in a leading position to develop an effective vaccine for the treatment of breast cancer patients with her2/neu positive tumors.