CEL-SCI Corporation, a phase 3 cancer immunotherapy company, has announced the US Patent and Trademark Office has allowed a patent titled, “Method for Inducing an Immune Response and Formulations Thereof” for the company’s LEAPS technology. CEL-SCI’s patented invention relates to methods for diagnosing, preventing, and treating disease by generating or modulating the immune response through the use of specific peptides.

This specific allowed patent expands the LEAPS platform technology protection by addressing the invention’s methods for diagnosing, preventing and treating infectious diseases, including using cellular delivery approaches, with indications such as influenza, including swine and avian flu, other viruses such as herpes, and also bacteria and parasites.

The LEAPS platform technology is currently being developed as a therapeutic vaccine for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) under a $1.5 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Upon completion of preclinical and Investigational New Drug (IND) enabling studies for the LEAPS-based rheumatoid arthritis vaccine candidate CEL-4000, CEL-SCI intends to file an IND application with the US Food and Drug Administration.

“As we move the first LEAPS platform vaccine candidate towards potential human studies, we are pleased by this important extra step forward. This patent expands and fortifies the intellectual property protection for our LEAPS technology platform,” said Dr. Daniel Zimmerman, senior vice president of Research, Cellular Immunology.

LEAPS is a patented, T-cell modulation, peptide epitope delivery technology that enables CEL-SCI to design and synthesize proprietary peptide immunogens. LEAPS compounds consist of a small T-cell binding peptide ligand linked with a disease-associated peptide antigen.

This platform technology has been shown in several animal models to preferentially direct the immune response to a cellular (e.g. T-cell), humoral (antibody) or mixed pathway and has been shown to involve upregulation of T-regulatory (Treg) cells in some animal models. It has the potential to be utilized in diseases for which antigenic epitope sequences have already been identified, such as: a number of infectious diseases, some cancers, autoimmune diseases (e.g., RA), allergic asthma and allergy, and select CNS diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's).