Imugene presents new data on anti-cancer treatments during prestigious AACR annual meeting

Imugene Ltd (ASX:IMU) (OTCMKTS:IUGNF) highlighted new data during presentations on the HER-Vaxx cancer immunotherapy program and the CF33 oncolytic virus program during the prestigious American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2021 Annual Meeting at the weekend. The company's chief medical officer Dr Rita Laeufle presented on HER-Vaxx while City of Hope’s Dr Yanghee Woo presented on the company's CF33 oncolytic virus program. Dr Laeufle presented ‘A phase 1B/2 open-label study with randomisation in phase 2 of IMU-131 HER2/NEU peptide immunotherapy plus standard of care chemotherapy in patients with HER2/NEU overexpressing metastatic or advance adenocarcinoma of the stomach or gastroesophageal junction.' Data highlights treatment potential The presentation highlighted the following new data:  Treatment with HER-Vaxx clearly demonstrates that all patients develop high levels of HER2- specific antibodies early in the treatment protocol; Analysis of the antibody data reveals high levels are maintained during the treatment and maintenance phases, with only minimal booster injections of HER-Vaxx required to maintain the high levels; The constant and high HER2 antibody levels correlate with the early separation of the Kaplan Meier (KM) Curves for overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) clinical trial endpoints (The Kaplan Meier Curve provides a recognised statistical estimation of the survival function which visually represents the probability of an event occurring for each treatment arm at a respective time interval); and Overall, this interim data is suggestive that the treatment is effective and well-tolerated with an overall survival benefit that is superior to chemotherapy alone.  Imugene’s HER-Vaxx is a B-cell peptide cancer immunotherapy designed to treat tumours that over-express the HER-2/neu receptor, such as gastric, breast, ovarian, lung and pancreatic cancers. The immunotherapy is constructed from several B cell epitopes derived from the extracellular domain of HER-2/neu and has been shown in pre-clinical studies and in Phase 1 and 2 studies to stimulate a potent polyclonal antibody response to HER-2/neu, a well-known and validated cancer target.  Final tumour response, correlation of antibodies with tumour response, and final PFS and OS data is expected to read out in 2021.  CF33 oncolytic virus program In addition, Imugene presented on the CF33 oncolytic virus program at the AACR 2021 annual meeting. The presentation by the City of Hope’s Department of Surgery and Director, Gastroenterology Minimally Invasive Therapy Program associate clinical professor Dr Yanghee Woo MD was on ‘Subcutaneous Intratumoral Administration of CF33-hNIS- anti-PD-L1 Eradicates Distant Peritoneal Tumours’. Dr Woo’s team engineered CF33-hNIS-antiPDL1, a unique chimeric orthopoxvirus, which shows robust preclinical activity against many solid tumours and inherent strong anti-cancer activity against pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The team investigated CF33-hNIS-antiPDL1 for its ability to track and kill distant peritoneal metastases after local virus administration in vivo.  Decreased peritoneal tumour burden in mice The CF33 oncolytic virus (OV) has been developed in two different constructs: one version of the OV is ‘armed’ with an immune checkpoint inhibitor inserted in the virus, which is known as CHECKvacc; and the other an unarmed construct, known as VAXINIA. The team at the City of Hope showed that subcutaneous intratumoral (SC.IT) delivery of CF33-hNIS-antiPDL1 decreases peritoneal tumour burden and improves survival in a PDAC mouse model.  This presentation also demonstrated that 124I-based PET/CT imaging can be used to visualize SC and peritoneal tumours treated with Imugene’s CF33-hNIS-antiPDL1.