Imugene Limited

Imugene is a clinical stage immuno-oncology company developing a range of new treatments that seek to activate the immune system of cancer patients to identify and eradicate tumors. The company's product pipeline includes oncolytic viruses (subject to share holders approval at the EGM) and immunotherapy B-cell vaccine candidates aimed at treating a variety of cancers in combination with standard of care drugs and immunotherapies. Imugene's oncolytic virus known as CF33, is a chimeric vaccinia derived through a recombination of favourable genetic sequences from multiple pox virus strains to generate a new, safer and more potent virus. The PD-1 B-cell vaccine, known as PD1-Vaxx, aims to induce the body to produce polyclonal antibodies that block PD-1 signalling, and thus produce an anticancer effect similar to Keytruda, Opdivo and the other immune checkpoint inhibitor monoclonal antibodies, that have transformed treatment for a range of cancers. PD1-Vaxx has shown encouraging potential in preclinical studies, including outperforming an industry-standard mouse anti-PD-1 antibody in a mouse model of HER2+ colorectal cancer. Imugene also has two HER2 B-cell vaccines in clinical trials, one from Ohio State University (OSU) known as B-Vaxx in Phase 2 clinical trial, and another from the University of Vienna Medical School known as HER-Vaxx in a Phase 1b/2 clinical trial. In earlier Phase I studies, both vaccines showed that they stimulated production of polyclonal antibodies against HER2, with encouraging indications of efficacy, thus providing proof of concept (PoC) for the B-cell vaccine technology as well as suggesting therapeutic potential in HER2+ cancers.