Geron Corporation and Immunomic Therapeutics Inc. (ITI) announced a patent license agreement under which Geron will receive exclusive rights to the Lamp antigen targeting sequence for use in cancer vaccines.

Geron's therapeutic cancer vaccine, Grnvac1, triggers an immune response against the universal cancer antigen, telomerase, and uses the Lamp sequence to enhance that immune response. The Lamp technology was invented at Johns Hopkins University and recently licensed to ITI for all applications.

Under the ITI-Geron license, Geron receives worldwide exclusive rights to the Johns Hopkins Lamp patents for cancer vaccines directed to telomerase as well as two additional antigen targets to be selected by Geron at a later date. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Grnvac1 has demonstrated tolerability and immunogenicity in a phase I/II clinical trial in metastatic prostate cancer," said Thomas B. Okarma, Ph.D., M.D., Geron's president and CEO. "In addition, results from this trial suggest that the use of the Lamp signal sequence may help to enhance the already potent immune responses seen with telomerase alone. We are pleased to secure rights for the use of the Lamp sequence in Grnvac1 and future cancer vaccine products."

The Lamp sequence causes an antigen to which it is attached to be taken up by the lysosomal subcellular compartment of the cell. This has been shown to increase presentation on MHC class II molecules, which in turn, can produce greater CD4+ T-cell responses against the antigen and a more potent and longer lasting overall immune response. A phase I/II clinical trial of Geron's Grnvac1 telomerase cancer vaccine conducted at Duke University has previously shown that addition of the lamp sequence to the telomerase antigen increased patient CD4+ T-cell responses and improved cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) mediated killing of cancer cells.

Grnvac1 is comprised of autologous dendritic cells loaded with telomerase mRNA linked to a Lamp targeting sequence. In March 2005, results of the first completed phase I/II clinical trial of Grnvac1 in metastatic prostate cancer patients were published in the Journal of Immunology.