Pharma

Artificial immune cell treatment for melanoma aims for human trials in 2013

A new treatment for cancer that uses artificial immune cells to trigger the body to […]

A new treatment for cancer that uses artificial immune cells to trigger the body to kill cancerous cells will raise a series A round this spring and look to an investigational new drug (IND) application next year.

NexImmune is an early stage biopharmaceutical company engineering artificial cells that can stimulate the immune system to treat cancer, transplant rejection, autoimmunity and infectious diseases. Its first candidate, AIM101, is intended for advanced-stage melanoma patients.

The idea of treating cancer through immunotherapy certainly isn’t novel, but the company says its particular approach is different from others being developed.

“The big caveat is that all of them are based either on raw administration of antigens that you hope the immune system will take up, or on taking cells out of the body, loading them with an antigen and put them back in body,” said CEO Kenneth Carter.

That process is expensive and tricky since the immune cells are already compromised and tend to get beaten up in the process, Carter said, which is why recently approved immunotherapies like Dendreon’s Provenge for prostate cancer and Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Yervoy for melanoma tend to be expensive with fairly low and short-term effectiveness.

NexImmune’s Artificial IMmune nanotechnology platform takes the approach of creating highly controllable and reproducible artificial cells that can be used either in vitro or ex vitro to orchestrate a specific immune attack on foreign substances or cell types.

Carter said the company has raised $500,000 in seed financing and is planning a $5 million to $10 million series A round this spring ahead of an IND filing in 2013. It will also be looking to form partnerships with larger pharmaceutical companies. Its goal is to have two cancer products in clinical trials by 2014.

NexImmune was founded in the fall of 2011 by a group of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine staff members and entrepreneurs affiliated with Noble Life Sciences in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where the company is located.

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