Date: 2014-06-04
Type of information: Milestone
Company: Agalimmune (UK-USA)
Investors: Loxbridge Research (UK), Animatrix Capital (UK)
Amount: undisclosed
Funding type:
Planned used: The funding will be used to continue the translation of Agalimmune’s leading immunotherapeutic technology, Alphaject™, licensed from the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), to the clinic. Alphaject is based on over 20 years of biomedical research carried out by UMMS Professor of Surgery and Medicine Uri Galili, PhD, who discovered the anti-gal immune response and its role in ‘hyper-acute’ organ rejection. The Alphaject technology includes methods for treating solid tumours in such a way that the immune system actively rejects them, akin to a non-matched graft or transplant. Tumours are directly injected with the Alphaject compound, to which humans naturally have a high antibody titre. Alphaject coats the tumour cells in alphagal, thereby presenting a foreign antigen to the immune system. This is thought to bring about a \'hyper-acute rejection\' of the tumour, and breaks the immune tolerance shielding the tumour from attack, allowing the immune system to both begin to destroy the tumour immediately and also to confer a long-lasting protection over time in the form of enhanced immune surveillance. The effect is analogous to a personalised cancer vaccine, acting continuously to prevent both metastasis and recurrence.
Others: * On June 4, 2014, Agalimmune, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of innovative immunotherapeutics for the treatment of cancer, announced that it has received a milestone payment from Loxbridge Research LLP (Loxbridge) and Animatrix Finance Ltd (Animatrix) following successful completion of two Phase I trials of its Alphaject™ technology in late stage cancer patients. The investment will be used to fund Agalimmune’s research into combination therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors such as the CTLA-4, PD-1, and PD-L1 classes of compounds, as part of its supportive preclinical work packages. The milestone payment represents continued investment into the Company, and is being made in response to the promising early clinical data from two separate Phase I trials involving twenty patients. The more recent trial, funded by the US National Institutes of Health, and performed at University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI, focused on late-stage melanoma patients. The results were reported in a poster presented at AACR, the American Association for Cancer Research conference, with a second poster presented at ASCO, the American Society for Clinical Oncology conference. Key findings presented in the AACR and ASCO posters were that in two of the nine patients, new melanoma-associated antigen specific T-Cells were found following treatment with Alphaject. Most significantly, also in two of nine patients, new necrosis of non-injected lesions was observed, suggesting effective systemic action of activated specific killer T-Cells, a key marker of likelihood of immune effect on survival. * On November 26, 2013, Agalimmune Ltd, a biopharmaceutical company, has been created to develop innovative immunotherapeutics for the treatment of cancer, with a focus on solid tumours. The new company has been founded by an investment group comprising Loxbridge Research LLP and Animatrix Capital LLP. Agalimmune is based both in London (Agalimmune Ltd) and California (Agalimmune Inc.).
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
