On February 13, 2023 Odimma Therapeutics (Strasbourg, France), a biopharmaceutical company developing an innovative immunotherapy platform dedicated to the treatment of cancer and myNEO (Ghent, Belgium), a data-driven neoantigen discovery company, reported that they are expanding their existing collaboration into a clinical trial collaboration agreement (Press release, myNEO Therapeutics , FEB 13, 2023, View Source [SID1234640210]). The agreement combines Odimma’s synthetic DNA vaccine technology with myNEO’s data analysis platform for fast and accurate per-patient identification and selection of neoantigen targets predicted to elicit strong immune responses. The agreement covers a phase I and phase II clinical trial in solid tumors.
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After combining Odimma’s DNA vaccine technology with neoantigens identified by myNEO and achieving promising preclinical results in mice last year, both companies decided to continue the successful collaboration into a clinical-stage program. myNEO will utilize its proprietary, best-in-class machine learning algorithms to screen the mutational profile of individual patients to investigate personalized highly immunogenic neoantigens. For this, myNEO will explore the complete genomic profile of the tumor to find more and novel sets of highly immunogenic neoantigenic sources.
"We strongly believe that the accurate prediction of immunodominant neoantigens along with the potency of the immunization platform are the two key drivers for the success of personalized immunotherapy," said Dr Jean-Marc Limacher, Chairman of the board and co-founder of Odimma. "We are very confident that the Artificial Intelligence solution developed by myNEO will give each patient the best chances of response to immunotherapy."
Odimma will manufacture the vaccine for each patient individually using its ODI-2001 candidate. The synthetic DNA vector vaccine will encode for up to 20 patient-specific tumor neoantigens, selected by myNEO, aiming to induce a potent and precise immune response against the patient’s unique tumor. The proven enhanced efficacy results in mice – compared to other vaccines targeting the same neoantigen – together with the rapid manufacturing process Odimma has developed, highlight the potential of the technology in a personalized setting.
"The myNEO project team is excited to have Odimma as our newest partner, and to be able to enter the field of DNA cancer vaccines," said Cedric Bogaert, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of myNEO. "We are fully convinced that a more patient-centric approach of evaluating and targeting the tumor will be an essential part of the future, and different parallel revolutions have enabled to incorporate it in a cost-efficient and logistically feasible process. The Odimma technology provides an innovative new avenue to bring the breakthroughs of personalized tumor targeting models to the patients."
The clinical phase I aims to test the personalized synthetic DNA vaccine as monotherapy in solid tumors and will be conducted in France. The trial is expected to be initiated in Q4 2023 to primarily assess feasibility and safety but also to collect early signs of efficacy. A program of translational research is closely associated to this first clinical trial.