Just referencing back to the recent presentation by Dr Fong to the ICRN Webinar 'Breaking New Ground - Advances in Oncolytic Virus Therapy for Cholangiocarcinoma'.
Its important to strip away some of the noise in regards to the presentation on two Imugene programs, namely Vaxinia and OnCARlytics. Firstly, its not a presentation by Imugene and secondly, its not targeted to an investor audience but to scientists, clinicians and patients impacted by cholangiocarcinoma. So, what's the point?
Arguably, its a more agnostic or unfiltered look into what's happening and what works. This particular line of reasoning has helped me to more fully understand where Imugene is heading and how the three big programs in fact, dovetail together. Whether this was seen from the beginning, just a lucky break or is the product of taking control once the opportunity was perceived, is hardly relevant. What is relevant, however, and is clearly perceived is that Imugene has a real shot at creating a ground breaking therapy in the global solid tumor cancer market estimated at US$186B in 2022 and estimated to grow to US$532B by 2032.
In my previous post, I made reference to Fong's remarks in relation to providing T cells to go. What I didn't realise at the time was that the whole presentation is titled Combining Cancer Killing Virus and CAR T Therapy for Cancer. It appears to me that this is the message for not only the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation but also shareholders and investors. The data from the MAST and azer-cel trials need to be promising but the real and sustained break through will arise when the therapeutics are combined.
We could ask what is the basis for hope and why does Fong appear excited by the possibility of combining his CF33 oncolytic virus with a CAR T therapy and more straightforward, an allogeneic CAR T therapy that presumably is azer-cel. What do they know that we don't!!!
Possibly, the significance of the pre-clinical data for azer-cel in combination with OnCARlytics is not fully appreciated by investors. Reference is made to slide 26 of the Imugene September 2024 presentation. Preclinically, azer-cel in combination with OnCARlytics demonstrated sustained, robust activity against multiple tumor types including 100% killing of triple negative breast and gastric cancer. It may be the case that the data from the respective trials is starting to align such that the preclinical appears to be translatable to the clinic.
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