Date: 2017-10-02
Type of information: Development agreement
Compound: oncolytic immunotherapies using Transgene’sviral platform Invir.IO™ and Randox’s SdAbs (single-domain antibodies)
Company: Transgene (France) Randox (UK)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Type agreement: development - collaboration
Action mechanism:
- oncolytic virus/immunotherapy product/single-domain antibody
- Invir.IO™ platform is Transgene’s proprietary oncolytic virus (OV) platform Invir. It allows it to design innovative
multifunctional oncolytic viruses. The platform is among others based on the Company’s engineered
Vaccinia virus strain (VVCOP TK-RR-) which can integrate a variety of functional transgenes. The platform has already shown that it can generate products that benefit from multifunctional arming (enzyme, antibody, cytokine, etc.), that are currently being evaluated in preclinical.
Disease:
Details:
- • On October 2, 2017, Transgene and Randox, a global leader in in vitro diagnostics, have entered into a collaboration to combine their technologies and develop multifunctional oncolytic immunotherapies. Innovative oncolytic viruses resulting from this collaboration will use Transgene’s proprietary next generation viral platform Invir.IO™in which one or more of Randox’s SdAbs (single-domain antibodies) will be vectorized.
- The immunotherapies resulting from this collaboration will combine the oncolytic effect of the viruses with the properties of the vectorized SdAbs that will be locally expressed in the tumor microenvironment (TME) with the aim of treating immunosuppressed solid tumors.
- Under the terms of the agreement, Transgene will develop novel anticancer oncolytic virus drugs using its proprietary Vaccinia virus (TK-, RR-) strain, and its expertise in molecular engineering and translational research. This novel viral strain offers increased oncolytic properties. In addition, its large genome capacity, which is very differentiating, enables multiple therapeutic payloads (“anticancer weapons”) to be delivered in the tumor, where the virus replicates.
- Randox will provide expertise in antibody engineering and make available its collection of new and future immunotherapeutic SdAbs to be used as vectorized payloads. These SdAbs have the potential to modulate the patient’s immune response and produce a powerful synergistic effect with Transgene’s oncolytic viral platform.
Transgene’s Invir.IO™ technology is an efficient way to target immunosuppressive pathways directly in the tumor microenvironment. By locally expressing one or several SdAbs in the TME, the viral-based approach promises to optimize the efficacy of the encoded therapeutic agents, while reducing their associated side effects, often reported after systemic administration.
Novel OV products generated from the collaboration have the potential to be significantly more effective than a combination of single agents. Transgene previously reported a preclinical proof-ofconcept data showing that an oncolytic Vaccinia virus encoding a sequence of anti-PD1 demonstrated better overall survival than the combination of separate single agents.
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