Immune Design, a clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on oncology, and Gritstone Oncology, a private cancer immunotherapy company developing next-generation, personalized cancer therapeutics, announced a clinical collaboration for development of novel, personalized immunotherapies combining both companies' leading technologies.
The collaboration will involve the application of Immune Design's ZVex discovery platform with Gritstone's proprietary genomics and proteomics platform for identification of patient-specific tumor antigens to develop neoantigen-based immunotherapies. Immune Design and Gritstone will be jointly responsible for development activities, with an initial likely focus in non-small cell lung cancer. The first clinical trial is expected to commence in 2017.
"The emerging tumor neoantigen field holds great potential for the successful application of cancer immunotherapies, and we are pleased to be working with Gritstone, a company that we believe is a pioneer in the field," said Carlos Paya, M.D., Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Immune Design. "Having validated our two platforms in clinical trials targeting conserved tumor antigens, we believe their application to patient specific tumor antigens is a natural next step."
For the first trial of their technologies, the companies are evaluating combining the Gritstone and Immune Design neoantigen vaccine with a checkpoint inhibitor, to optimize the vaccine-induced immune response at several levels and maximize the likelihood of clinical efficacy.
"We are excited to work with Immune Design and their novel immunotherapy approach," said Andrew Allen, M.D., Ph.D., co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Gritstone Oncology. "There is good evidence that viral vectors are one of the most effective means of generating high titer CD8+ T cells that recognize encoded antigens, and so this is a logical move for our company, as our neoantigen prediction platform starts to deliver immune targets for individual patients with lung cancer."