HAMILTON, Bermuda, April 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Incysus, Ltd., a biopharmaceutical company focused on delivering an innovative off-the-shelf cellular therapy for the treatment of solid tumor cancers announced today that the European Patent Office has granted European Patent No. 2496244. This patent covers claims related to methods of combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer. This new patent supports our scaffold approach to building an intellectual property portfolio allowing the novel combination of multiple modes of therapy for the treatment of cancer.
The compositions covered by the patent generally relate to genetically modified natural killer (NK) cells that confer resistance to a chemotherapy agent. The claimed compositions can be used to protect immune cells from drug induced toxicities, thereby allowing for the combined administration of immuno- and chemotherapy. When dosed together, such combinations can result in anti-tumor responses by the chemotherapy, and reduces the immunosuppressive effects of the tumor while driving enhanced immune-mediated tumor cell killing, a treatment termed “drug resistant immunotherapy” or DRI.
“As novel combinations of chemotherapy and immunotherapies expand across the treatment landscape, the ability to protect immune cells from the toxic effects of chemotherapy in order to maintain a functional immune response is crucial to better long-term outcomes in patients undergoing cancer treatment,” said William Ho, Chief Executive Officer of Incysus.
This patent is owned by Incysus’ academic collaborators at Emory University, the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta (CHOA) and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and is licensed exclusively to Incysus for all therapeutic purposes. Incysus and the UAB are moving quickly towards an investigational new drug application (IND) filing with the U.S. FDA to test the safety and efficacy of DRI γδ T cells in patients with glioblastoma.
About Incysus, Ltd.
Incysus is a Bermuda incorporated company focused on delivering a novel off-the-shelf cell therapy for the treatment of cancer. By using genetically modified γδ T cells, our technology addresses the challenges that immunotherapies face targeting cold, low mutation, cancers. The Company's immuno-oncology programs with its collaborators include activated and gene modified adoptive cellular therapies that protect cells from chemotherapy and allow novel combinations to disrupt the tumor microenvironment and more selectively target cancer cells.