On November 4, 2023 Candel Therapeutics, Inc. (the Company or Candel) (Nasdaq: CADL), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing viral immunotherapies to help patients fight cancer, reported that it will present two posters during the 2023 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) (Free SITC Whitepaper) Annual Meeting in San Diego focused on the enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform (Press release, Candel Therapeutics, NOV 4, 2023, View Source [SID1234636975]).
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"We aim to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite various aspects of drug discovery and development," said Paul Peter Tak, MD, PhD, FMedSci, President and Chief Executive Officer of Candel. "Combined with our strong focus on human biology for drug discovery and our deep experience with herpes simplex virus as therapeutic vectors, Candel is poised to expand its portfolio of promising viral immunotherapy candidates and create value through discovery partnerships."
The first poster titled ‘Development of enLIGHTEN Alpha-201 herpes simplex viral vectors encoding payloads targeting the tumor microenvironment’ reports preclinical characterization of the enLIGHTEN viral chassis Alpha-201. Profiling of biological responses to Alpha-201 unveiled its potential to orchestrate changes in the tumor microenvironment, supportive of effective anti-tumor immune responses to immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment. In preclinical models, Alpha-201 displayed enhanced peripheral blood mononuclear cell-mediated cancer cell killing and immune activation when armed with certain immunostimulatory payload combinations which was predicted in silico using the enLIGHTEN Advanced Analytics suite. These data validate Candel’s novel approach for in silico prediction of payload combinations and selection of indication-specific payloads with anti-tumoral activity using human datasets as a tool to accelerate, improve and de-risk certain aspects of the development of transformative viral immunotherapies.
"Tumor resistance to immunotherapy is driven by multiple mechanisms, which are heterogeneous in nature," said Francesca Barone, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Candel. "By interrogating human datasets and generating predictions on tumor-specific mechanisms of progression, enLIGHTEN provides a unique opportunity to predict optimal gene payload combinations to arm viral vectors, enabling the design of multimodal therapeutics with greater potential to overcome tumor resistance."
The second poster titled ‘A novel viral immunotherapeutic targeting the CD47/SIRPα axis demonstrates potent anti-tumor effects’ describes the design of the first experimental agent based on the enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform, Alpha-201-macro1. This investigational agent is comprised of an immunostimulatory and oncolytic engineered viral chassis armed with a novel gene payload that is designed to interfere with the CD47/SIRPα pathway.
"Therapies targeting the CD47/SIRPα pathway have shown promising clinical results in solid and hematological malignancies; however, efficacy is often hindered by systemic toxicity," said Anne Diers, PhD, Senior Director of Research at Candel Therapeutics. "The Alpha-201-macro1 preclinical data presented today support the utility of local delivery of an immunologically active, multimodal agent as a potential alternative to systemic therapy. We are excited to leverage the enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform to optimize the immunostimulatory payload of this agent for activation of innate immune surveillance with the goal of maximizing its therapeutic potential."
Further details from the posters are available on the Candel website at: www.candeltx.com/media
About the enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform
Candel’s enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform is a systematic, iterative HSV-based discovery platform leveraging human biology and advanced analytics to create new viral immunotherapies for solid tumors. In October 2022, the Company announced a discovery collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Cellular Immunotherapies to identify how viral immunotherapy could enhance the efficacy of CAR-T cell therapy in solid tumors. The enLIGHTEN Discovery Platform is designed to deconvolute the complexity of the tumor microenvironment to identify druggable properties that correlate with clinical outcomes. These discoveries are translated into optimized multi-gene payloads of tumor modulators that are tailored for specific indications, disease stage, and rationally designed therapeutic combinations.