California based Aduro Biotech is ready to combine two recently acquired GVAX cancer vaccines with its listeria based vaccine in order to produce a potent non-antibody combination vaccine.
“At present, there are only two approved therapeutic cancer vaccines,” said Dr. Steven Bodovitz from Aduro to In-Pharmatechnologist.com. “While additional single-agent cancer therapies are in late-stage clinical trials, we believe that combinations will become the standard for the next generation.”
The GVAX technology is, according to Aduro, an excellent component in combination vaccines as it secretes genetically modified granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) which, once in the body, rapidly increase the number of white blood cells to fight infection.
A combination with listeria is currently in Phase 2 clinical trials but Aduro is also developing a platform by combining the GVAX platforms with potent small-molecule immune modulators secreted from listeria to create STINGVAX.
Though data has not yet been published Bodovitz said STINGVAX efficacy “is significantly more effective” than the single agents alone.
Having previously licensed the assets from BioSante Pharmaceuticals, Aduro now owns outright sevral GVAX vaccines, including one for pancreatic and one for prostate cancer. The acquisition comes just days after the company announced the completion of a $6.5m (EUR4.8m) financing investment.
Bodovitz said the two deals were clearly related but would not go into more details. He also said that the process of whether to bringing the vaccines to market, whether in-house or licensed out, would be determined following clinical success.