Spotlight Innovation Inc. has entered into a research agreement with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to conduct studies to validate the efficacy of Spotlight Innovation’s Immunoplex immunotherapy platform technology for metastatic breast cancer in mouse models. These pre-clinical studies are anticipated to take approximately six months and are intended to validate significant and highly favorable prior test data. The data will be submitted as part of an Investigational New Drug (IND) filing with the US Food and Drug Administration. Lyse A. Norian, PhD, is the principal investigator. Dr. Norian conducted the original studies during her tenure at the University of Iowa.

The study protocol includes the examination of primary tumour growth in mice, the examination of metastatic tumour growth in mice with resected primary tumours, and analyses of tumor-infiltrating and systemic leukocytes in tumor-bearing mice.

Tony Vanden Bush, PhD, co-inventor of the Immunoplex immunotherapy platform and Spotlight Innovation’s manager of product development, said, “We are looking forward to validating our previous results. This is a key step in the submittal of our IND and the commencement of human clinical trials.”

Cris Grunewald, president and chief executive officer of Spotlight Innovation, said, “We are pleased to be cooperating, once again, with Dr. Norian in her new role at UAB, and look forward to advancing our personalized cancer tumor therapy technology to the human testing phase.”

Immunoplex is a vaccine platform technology that utilises a “universal” antibody, in conjunction with a proprietary epitope “adapter,” that binds to targeted antigens to treat or prevent specific diseases. Applications for the technology are solid cancerous tumors (a broad range of cancer indications) and a virtually unlimited number of viral and bacterial infections. This technology has the potential to create numerous “immune complex vaccines” for a wide range of indications. Because the Immunoplex therapy utilises cancer cells from a patient’s own tumor, it is a truly personalized cancer treatment.