Media Thread, page-9640

Hi Cash

Thanks for posting this. Prof Fong is getting everyone's attention right now due to his visit, and because CF33 looks so exciting, but the B cell platform is also unique to Imugene and it has massive potential.

The multi segment interview with Prof Kaumaya that you posted a link to is extremely interesting. Prof K has a lot to say and he is clearly passionate about B cell vaccines. He highlights the limitations of the current SOC monoclonal antibody drugs - limited effectiveness, short duration of effect, toxicity and massive costs. He also emphasises the benefits of the B cell polyclonal antibody approach that he has pioneered (in parallel with the Medical university of Vienna team who developed Her-vaxx). Specifically - longer duration of effect, minimal to nil toxicity, low cost, ease of administration.

Anyone who has been following IMU and reading up on the B cell vaccine will know all that already. Some other issue he raises:

• Peptide based vaccines (eg Her-vaxx and PD1-vaxx) are extremely safe but the FDA treats them like any other "small molecule drug" - as if they are potentially toxic. Trials to date have been limited to patients who have had multiple treatments of Chemotherapy - so their immune system has taken a massive hit. That make them poor candidate for an immune therapy vaccine which relies on an immune system response. He says that in his trials (I assume he means the B-vaxx and PD1-vaxx trials) - patients were put on a 6 week break from all treatment before starting the vaccine, in order to give them some chance for their immune system to recover before starting the trial.
• IMU downplays the B-vaxx trial (which started well before Prof K licensed his work to Imugene) - but Prof K seems very upbeat about his "Her 2 vaccine" - which I think can only be a reference to B-vaxx, because Her-vaxx was developed by the Vienna team. In reply to an email, Leslie Chong has said to me that B-vaxx has limited remaining patent time, but Prof K is still running his Phase 2 trial and also using B-vaxx in combination with other B cell vaccines in preclinical animal studies. I can't help wondering whether he ha further plans for B-vaxx - eg tweaking the forums to get a new patent.
• Prof K emphasises several time the importance of combination therapies. eg. two or more B-cell vaccines used together. This is definitely the approach IMU is taking - but because there are no FDA approved B cell vaccines, the combination study for Her-vaxx is with Keytruda (monoclonal antibody drug). I think Prof K is saying that a combination of B cell vaccines would be better.
• Prof K - as we know - has a whole suite of B cell vaccines in development.

It's a great interview to watch. Lots there to think about.

Cheers

Dave