ImmunoCellular Therapeutics and Memgen Announce Letter of Intent for Potential Joint Immuno-Oncology Collaboration
March 23, 2017 at 06:00 am EDT
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ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Ltd. and Memgen, LLC announced the signing of a non-binding letter of intent to exclusively negotiate the terms to possibly establish an immuno-oncology strategic collaboration focused on conducting clinical trials combining the companies' respective cancer immunotherapy product candidates. The discussions pertain to ImmunoCellular's dendritic cell (DC)-based immunotherapy product candidates, ICT-107 and ICT-140, and Memgen's ISF35, a viral cancer immunotherapy encoding an optimized version of CD40 ligand. Combining DC-based and viral oncology immunotherapeutic approaches could provide a novel way to stimulate CD40 to possibly induce a potent, specific and effective anti-tumor response. Insights from these combination trials, if successful, could also lead to later combination trials with other immune-oncology technologies, including checkpoint inhibitors. If the parties agree upon the terms of a strategic collaboration, including financials, development, supply and control, ImmunoCellular and Memgen plan to work together to determine the best clinical strategy to leverage the collaboration. ICT-107 is a dendritic cell-based immunotherapy targeting six tumor-associated antigens on glioblastoma stem cells. ICT-107 is currently being tested in a phase 3 registration trial in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma. The ongoing phase 3 registrational trial of ICT-107 is designed as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of HLA-A2+ subjects, which is being conducted at about 120 sites in the US, Canada and the EU, with plans to randomize 542 patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma. The primary endpoint in the trial is overall survival. Secondary endpoints include progression-free survival and safety, as well as overall survival in the two pre-specified MGMT subgroups.
EOM Pharmaceutical Holdings, Inc. is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company. The Company is focused on developing novel drugs for patients suffering from debilitating and deadly diseases, including infectious diseases; autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis; and cachexia associated with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and cancer. It has two pipeline assets in their portfolio: EOM613 and EOM147. EOM613 is an investigational immunomodulator. EOM613 is a peptide-nucleic acid solution with both anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory broad spectrum cytokine effects. EOM613 helps to suppress or stimulate monocytes and macrophages depending on the activation state and environment of those key immune cells resulting in either further activation or suppression. EOM 147 is an investigational, broad-spectrum aminosterol with an intracellular mechanism for the treatment of retinal diseases. EOM147 affects multiple angiogenic growth factors such as VEGF, PdGF, and bFGF.