Devices & Diagnostics, Pharma

Cancer vaccine firm Immunophotonics wants clinical trials within six months

A Missouri biotech company developing a laser-guided cancer vaccine therapy is raising money to get […]

A Missouri biotech company developing a laser-guided cancer vaccine therapy is raising money to get into clinical trials by the end of the year.

Immunophotonics  has so far focused its laser-assisted immunotherapy, called inCVAX, primarily on breast cancer treatment. The two-step device and drug process attacks late-stage metastatic cancer. It first injects a tumor with laser fibers and heats it to break it down into its component parts. Then the drug, Protectin, is injected to activate the immune system to recognize and purge the cancerous areas.

The company wants to raise about $1 million, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Immunophotonics co-founder and CEO Tomas Hode  said that the drug has shown long-term immunity against cancer in tests on animals. The drug could also cost less than other vaccines under development, Hode said.

“It’s a personal vaccine where we use the patient’s own tumor cells,” he said. “We don’t need to do any extraction; everything happens inside the body.”

Off-shore facilities in Peru and the Bahamas are already testing inCVAX primarily for breast cancer treatment and melanoma treatment — both of which typically have easily accessible tumors. Hode said the results have been promising. Protectin, which is derived from a type of glucose called chitin, appears to be nontoxic and without major side effects to patients so far.

Hode hopes to go through accelerated approval with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials in the United States by year’s end. Hode estimates the company will need to raise another $13 million to $15 million to get inCVAX through the FDA approval process and be on the market by 2016.

This would be the first product to go to market for Immunophotonics, which is headquartered at the University of Missouri Life Science Business Incubator. Hode said the compound Protectin was developed about 15 years ago by two of the company’s main investors, Wei Chen  and Bob Nordquist, who discovered its powerful effects accidentally while working on ophthalmology trials. Immunophotonics was founded in 2008 around the new cancer vaccine therapy.

Hode said he thinks inCVAX is an important development because it could be used alone or in conjunction with surgery. He is also confident it could be used with other cancers, as a prostate or lung cancer vaccine therapy, for example.

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