Ultimovacs ASA, a clinical stage leader in immune stimulatory vaccines for cancer, received a Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) concerning its US patent application 16/306,352 on the use of vaccine-checkpoint inhibitor combinations to treat cancer.
The company said that subject to grant formalities, it is expected that a patent will issue with a patent term up to at least June 2037. Ultimovacs has similar patent applications pending in other territories worldwide, including Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia.
The scope of the patent, when issued, will cover cancer treatments that include the UV1 peptide vaccine in combination with an anti-CTLA-4, anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1 antibody checkpoint inhibitor, the company said. The primary patents of many of the current CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors face expiry over the course of the next several years, the company said.
Carlos de Sousa, Chief Executive Officer of Ultimovacs, said: “We are pleased that Ultimovacs’ innovative contributions to combination immunotherapies in cancer have been validated by the USPTO. The company’s universal cancer vaccine UV1 is being assessed in combination with checkpoint inhibitors in five phase 2 trials for various cancers.” De Sousa said the allowed claims will cover such combination treatments across these and other cancer indications and will extend proprietary use of the vaccine in combination with these checkpoint inhibitors until at least 2037.
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