Good morning all
I hope Christmas was wonderful for everyone - as either a celebration or just as a holiday.
We are now in the hazy lazy zombie trading days between Christmas and New Year, when nothing ever seems to happen. However the reality is that we have five clinical trials all in progress (six if you include the Check-vacc trial which is still proceeding through City of Hope, or
seven if you include the Neo-Polem trial of PD1-vaxx which is being recruited for now). So while "nothing seems to happen" between Christmas and New Year the truth is that Imugene has a
HUGE amount happening - right now, every day. And every one of those days brings us closer to data on the effectiveness of the Imugene product pipeline.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the researchers who invented those products keep progressing their knowledge and sharing it in the medical science community.
Back on 23 November I posted a link to, and my summary of, a new paper by the Vienna team who brought us Her-vaxx. At that time the paper was unpublished and was not peer reviewed.
However a peer reviewed version of the paper has now just been published in the International Journal of Molecular Science. You can read the paper here:
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/1/287You can also read my 23 Nov summary and analysis here:
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/why-imu-is-a-multi-multi-bagger.5431324/page-19110?post_id=71066146Both the paper and my summary from 23 Nov are a bit "science heavy" so if you want an easier read the key points are:
- Her-vaxx attacks the same cancer target as the blockbuster drug Herceptin (Trastuzumab) and does it so well that it suffers one of the same limitations as Herceptin - in some patients the cancer transforms itself to "escape" from the treatment. It stops expressing the HER2 protein targeted by Her-vaxx and Herceptin, and starts producing an immune suppressing PD-L1.
- This explains why some of the Her-vaxx treated patients started to respond to the treatment - but then relapsed. Herceptin suffers the same problem. The good news - This is further evidence that the current combination trial of Her-vaxx plus Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) should work even better than Her-vaxx alone - because Keytruda will hit any cancer cells which stop expressing Her2 and start expressing PD-L1.
- The Vienna team has also produced a new version of Her-vaxx which still attacks the same cancer targets as Herceptrin, but now also attacks the same targets as Perjeta (Pertuzumab) - the cancer drug commonly used in combination with Herceptin to treat HER2 positive breast cancers.
My personal view:
- Her-vaxx is very much a "live" product and the current clinical trial with Keytruda could produce extremely exciting results
- Positive results from that trial will greatly boost the chances of a commercial deal for Her-vaxx
- The new version of Her-vaxx further demonstrates the flexibility of the B cell immunotherapy approach - and adds value to any possible deal
- Any potential purchaser of Her-vaxx is probably also interested in PD1-vaxx, because a combo of Her-vaxx plus PD1-vaxx should be even better than a Her-vaxx plus Keytruda combination. Two B cell drugs with superb safety/tolerability, working together, should be much better than Her-vaxx in combo with Keytruda - which can have quite nasty side effects.
- I think Her-vaxx has one value viewed in isolation and a second, much higher potential valuation, if the current PD1-vaxx clinical trial in non small cell lung cancer produces further strong results. There would be a third value - higher still - if PD1-vaxx also produces strong positive results in the upcoming Neo-Polem colo-rectal cancer trial.
Anyway - that's how it seems to me.
Best wishes to all
Dave
(20min delay)