Regen BioPharma files patent application on mRNA dendritic cell cancer immunotherapeutic

The current work builds upon the Company’s Cancer Immunotherapy Platform. This patent application covers intellectual property that provides a means of specifically inducing dendritic cells to internally generate tumor antigens, a process which is believed to be more effective then exogenously administering antigens to dendritic cells.

The majority of dendritic cell therapeutics involve "feeding" dendritic cells antigens, this leads to a different type of immune response than if the antigens are generated inside of the dendritic cell.

"The dendritic cell is the most potent stimulator of the immune response, and controls whether T cells will be activated to kill tumors, or will be suppressed. Regen has been highly focused on understanding and manipulating the biology of dendritic cells in order to develop highly potent cancer immunotherapeutics," stated Thomas Ichim, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Regen.

"This new addition builds upon our work with dCellVax and covers a means of making more potent dendritic cells by gene silencing the immune suppressive gene, indolamine 2,3, deoxygenase (IDO) in dendritic cells.

"The current work was the basis for which the patent application was filed builds upon our work with dCellVax and covers the means of making dendritic cells activate a different subset of T cells than they normally would have, thus increasing probability of the patient’s immune response killing the tumor."

Regen’s dCellVax product, which is a breast cancer dendritic cell based vaccine, was granted IND #16200, for which the company is currently in the process of addressing FDA questions before a 10 patient clinical trial can begin.

The new patent application expands on this platform technology taking advantage of the innovations in the field of gene expression that allow for mRNA transfection in to cells.

"Regen is highly focused on advancing to clinical practice cutting edge technology. In a field such as biotechnology, it is innovation that allows us to maintain a competitive edge. Our two cell therapy products, dCellVax and HemaXellerate, have established us as a Company that is focused on bringing cutting edge technology to the clinic. With those products being at the IND stage, our in-house researchers are now able to be highly committed to building on our core competencies of innovative research in cancer immunotherapy and targeting of cancer stem cells. As a company we feel it is important to aggressively advance our intellectual property so we may stand on the cutting edge," said David Koos, Chairman and CEO of Regen BioPharma.