Good morning allAn update on Prof Pravin Kaumaya - member of...

 Good morning all

An update on Prof Pravin Kaumaya - member of the IMU Scientific Advisory Board and the inventor of PD1-vaxx.

Prof Kaumaya has been at the University of Ohio since well before his involvement with IMU, and the IMU website still shows him at Ohio, but I have seen a few references recently which show him as now being at the University of Indiana.

The University of Indiana has just confirmed the move - with a very interesting announcement. Pravin is now a Professor at the IU medical school, but he is also:

• Director of the Immuno-Oncology and Vaccine Immunotherapy Laboratory at the University of Indiana Brown Center for Immunotherapy
• Vera Bradley Foundation Professor of Breast Cancer Innovation at the Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center

You can read their media release here:

https://medicine.iu.edu/news/2024/02/world-renowned-researcher-innovative-work-cancer-therapy-iu

It includes two interesting statements by Pravin:

"We are creating a paradigm shift in cancer therapy with novel chimeric B-cell-epitope vaccines. Being part of the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center will accelerate the process of translating our discoveries to patients."

and

"We've developed novel peptide vaccines for several checkpoint inhibitors, such as two proteins — PD1 and CTLA-4 — recognized as regulators of immune responses ... The combination of these vaccines could offer safe medications for cancer in a number of different indications." 

So Pravin sees the move as helping him get his B cell vaccines progressed through to approval. There is also a clue here that he sees his CTLA-4 vaccine (currently at pre-clinical stage along with several other vaccines) as the next one he wants to progress to clinical stage.

You can read about the Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center here:
https://www.cancer.gov/research/infrastructure/cancer-centers/find/indianasimon

Cheers

Dave