OncoSec Medical Inc (ONCSQ)

[guti]

With Global IP Secured, ImmunID Outlines Plans for PCR-Based Cancer Companion Test Market

ImmunID announced this week it has obtained patent protection in China, adding to IP in Europe, Japan, and the US, and completing a global IP strategy protecting the firm's technology base. ImmunID is developing a method called ImmuneTracker for profiling T cell repertoires as a companion test for immune checkpoint inhibitors.
"Immunotherapy costs between $100,000 and $250,000 per patient, per year," Sixt said, but it is also "a real revolution in cancer; people for the first time are experiencing that you can effectively treat metastatic patients who are basically already written off according to usual wisdom, and some of them stand up and go home." The rate of full response, however, is around 4 percent to 20 percent, he noted, and "if you unleash the immune system, you get quite nasty side effects because the immune system is a very powerful beast — it can kill the cancer but it can also make a lot of trouble for the patient." Thus, success depends on predicting response and side-effects, Sixt said.

(I say, how about success depends on helping with response and side-effects?)

As a companion testing, there are numerous immune checkpoint inhibitors that might theoretically benefit from being guided by ImmunTracker data. As previously reported by GenomeWeb, AstraZeneca is developing the PD-L1 inhibitor MEDI4736; Roche/Genentech is developing MPDL3280A, a PD-L1 inhibitor; Bristol-Myers Squibb is advancing an anti-PD-L1 drug BMS-936559 and the PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab); and Merck is developing a PD-1 inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab). The FDA recently approved Opdivo in advanced melanoma and advanced squamous NSCLC; and Keytruda in advanced melanoma. These four firms are studying these immunotherapies in NSCLC with the help of an IHC test from either Ventana or Dako. Perkin Elmer has also begun a collaboration with OncoSec to test its Vectra quantitative pathology imaging system as a means of determining responders to Keytruda.

GenomeWeb