OncoSec Medical Inc (ONCSQ)

[hschlauch]

Imagine you’re Merck or BMS. Sales of your anti-PD-1 drugs (Keytruda and Opdivo) exceed $8b and $5b, respectively, each year. And sales are growing rapidly yoy. Imagine what would happen to your share price if a company like Oncosec achieves the unthinkable: priming in situ immune responses for solid tumors while simultaneously negating the need for anti-PD-1 therapy.

The problem with Oncosec’s current IRES-based plasmid construct and electroporation voltage parameters is that transfection is not optimal, nor is IL-12 expression. If you don’t see adequate IL-12 levels being expressed intratumorally, odds are pretty good that you also won’t observe elevated levels of interferon gamma (and subsequent expression of STAT 1 genes); you won’t observe high T-bet levels, but higher Eomes and more T cell exhaustion; greater Treg ratios; poor tumor antigen presentation; and fewer chemokines that draw T cells into the TME.

I think “Spark”, the new multigene product, will undoubtedly resolve these issues and effectively reduce or completely eliminate the need for anti-PD-1 agents.