Oncosec continues to build on Dr. Heller's work.
The Reidy Center recently finished working on a $1.5 million project initiated in 2008 and funded by the NIH titled “Therapeutic Potential of IL-15 Plasmid Delivery to Tumors Using Electroporation” in which Dr. Heller was the principal investigator for evaluating a potential therapy for cancer. The five-year project, which ended on 2/28/15, will develop an appropriate treatment protocol that can eventually be tested in clinical trials. The study was designed to evaluate B16.F10 melanoma growth or regression in response to electrically mediated IL-15 plasmid delivery, while determining immune responses and evaluating the effect of intratumoral and intramuscular delivery of IL-15 on the growth of metastatic melanomas, including both subcutaneous and lung lesions. Also to evaluate its potential toxicity of electrically mediated IL-15.
Coincidently, in January 13, 2015, Oncosec received allowance for claims covering the method of treating cancerous tumors with plasmid-encoded IL-15 and electroporation therapy on tumors. I would presume that the research by Dr. Heller was positive which is why Oncosec went ahead with applying for the patent before any results are released. In addition, recent studies concluded in 2014 have shown that the combination of Cetuximab with IL-15 may be considered an attractive therapeutic approach to enhance the clinical efficacy of Cetuximab in TNBC. The rights to Cetuximab, also known as Erbitux in the market, were recently transferred to Lilly from BMS after a battle for ImClone, the company that design the drug, which ended up costing $6.1 billion.
