NEC OncoImmunity (NOI), a subsidiary of NEC Corporation
(NEC), and VAXIMM AG, a Swiss/German biotech company focused on developing
an oral plug and play DNA vaccination technology to stimulate patients’
cytotoxic T-cells targeting a wide range of cancer-related antigens, has
announced that the companies have signed an agreement under which NOI
will acquire all of VAXIMM’s neoantigen program assets.
Under the agreement, NOI will acquire VAXIMM’s neoantigen vaccine-related
patents, license the requisite manufacturing patents, and will take over
several existing contracts with key collaborators and partners, NOI said. Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.
In 2019, the companies entered into a strategic clinical trial collaboration agreement and an
equity investment agreement to develop novel personalized neoantigen
cancer vaccines. VAXIMM retains rights to its first-in-class oral T-cell
activation platform technology and all other product candidates, including
VXM01, which is being developed for the treatment of glioblastoma, the company said.
Commenting on the announcement, Richard Stratford, CEO of NOI, said, “We
believe this is a transformative transaction for NOI/NEC. With it, NOI/NEC
has acquired the rights to an attractive delivery platform with broad
therapeutic potential in oncology and other areas. Following this
acquisition, we expect to initiate the first clinical study delivering
personalized neoantigens during 2022, which is an important milestone. Our
unique artificial intelligence (AI) technology is focused on several
attractive areas of unmet medical need with major market potential, and we
now have the components in place to fully realize this significant
commercial opportunity.”
Thomas D. Szucs, MD, Chairman of the Board of VAXIMM, said, “I am excited
to see the progress that has been made in advancing our neoantigen program,
already with the strong support of NEC as partner and investor. I
congratulate the VAXIMM team, under Dr. Lubenau’s leadership, for bringing
this important project to clinical testing stage. We are delighted that
the NOI team will now take this program forward into the clinic with the
goal of bringing a novel therapy to patients in desperate need of more
treatment options.”
Dr. Heinz Lubenau, CEO and Co-founder of VAXIMM, said, “We believe that
NEC OncoImmunity is the ideal company to take VAXIMM’s novel neoantigen
programs through development and hopefully to the market to help patients.
The first project from our earlier collaboration utilizing NEC’s AI
platform has received clinical trial approval in Europe, and we are
excited that NEC will be putting its resources behind this and future
neoantigen vaccine programs derived from VAXIMM’s novel technology.”
Motoo Nishihara, Executive Vice President, CTO (Chief Technology Officer)
and Member of the Board, NEC Corporation, said, “Cancer and infectious
diseases are two of the most serious healthcare challenges, with millions
of new cases diagnosed worldwide annually. NEC’s core AI technology is
well positioned for the development of personalized medicines, and we are
strongly committed to delivering effective treatments for cancer patients
and infectious diseases. We are confident that this acquisition of assets
from VAXIMM will enable us to further develop our AI-optimized and
personalized therapies to benefit the health of individual patients
worldwide.”
The transaction expands NEC’s neoantigen drug development pipeline by
broadening its focus into several compelling therapeutic areas with high
unmet medical need. VAXIMM’s plug and play DNA vaccination technology is
based on a live attenuated, safe, orally available bacterial vaccine
strain, which is modified to stimulate patients’ cytotoxic T-cells to
target a wide range of cancer-related antigens. The platform allows for
fast and scalable manufacturing of personalized T-cell cancer vaccines and
may overcome key challenges faced by many other approaches, NOI said in its press release.