Investors sought for Auckland University's Sapvax cancer vaccine spin-out

Investors are being sought for US$8 million of funding to commercialise an anti-cancer vaccine using immunotherapy technology developed by a team led by Maurice Wilkins Centre director Rod Dunbar and Margaret Brimble, director of Auckland University's medicinal chemistry programme.

UniServices, the University of Auckland's commercial arm, is setting up the spin-out company, Sapvax, to commercialise the patented vaccines.

The research has run in parallel with that underway at the Malaghan Institute and Victoria University's Ferrier Research Institute, which has set up a company called Avalia Immunotherapies to commercialise a synthetic vaccine technology which also uses a patient's own immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells.

Unlike traditional vaccines, cancer vaccines are administered after the disease has developed and can be used alongside traditional cancer treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy.

Dunbar said Sapvax vaccines are ready, pending regulatory approval, to move to clinical trials.

"New Zealand has a lot of capability in this field," with a pipeline of products targeting cancer immunotherapy, he said.

Cancer cells can initially seem normal to the immune system, tricking the body into thinking nothing is wrong. The synthetic peptide vaccines alert the immune system, and trigger immune cells called T cells to search for and kill cancer tumours.

Molecules within the vaccines alert the immune system there is danger present. The rest of the vaccines are made up of synthetic molecules that mimic ones found in cancer cells. Together, the combined vaccines tell the immune system to seek and destroy any cells carrying the same molecules as the vaccines, which were previously unrecognised as a threat.

Cancer vaccines alone have shown to be effective in only a small number of cancer patients, but their real value is in being used alongside new immunotherapy drugs, called checkpoint blockers, which re-activate immune cells that have been switched off by the cancer cells.

While some patients have responded well to these drugs, many others haven't. One reason they may not work is that the patients' immune cells have never recognised the tumour and on those patients, Sapvax vaccines could combine with checkpoint blockers to cause a durable remission from cancer.

"It's like an off button. With vaccines alone the tumours can turn on the off button and the T cells stop working. The anti-PD-1 drugs put a plastic barrier over the red button and the tumour can't put it back on and the vaccines can work better," Dunbar said.

"Cancer vaccines are a hot area of development to go with these drugs," said Adam Podmore, UniServices commercialisation manager. Cancer immunotherapy is estimated to become a US$35 billion per year market within the next decade and "these vaccines" are part of that, Podmore said.

He said Sapvax targets a different process of immune activation from the Avalia vaccine, using a unique chemistry that involves a single step to "clip on" the immune activator.

Connecting the cancer molecule and the danger signal in a single reaction makes them simple and flexible to manufacture. The vaccines can be changed easily when a different type of cancer is being targeted.

Podmore said US$2.5 million of the equity investment will be spent on an 18-month clinical trial in Auckland involving around 20 cancer patients on the first patented vaccine product, SV-283, which targets cancers including melanoma, sarcoma, ovarian, and non-small cell lung cancer.

He said Sapvax's platform technology includes different vaccines for various types of cancers and eventually other diseases. A second product, SV-638, is also well down the development pipeline and targets Epstein Barr Virus-positive tumours, such as lymphoma and nasopharyngeal cancer (a rare type of head and neck cancer).

"We're looking for someone with money to invest and with the ability to manage and put management teams in place to commercialise this technology," Podmore said. An alternative is licensing the technology to an existing company.

Auckland University has a GMP peptide facility, which has had previous Medsafe approval to manufacture medicines, that can make the peptides used in the vaccines.

Brimble said Sapvax will be the first spin-out company she's been involved in. "It's one of the things I've wanted to do," she said.

(BusinessDesk)

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