Agenus, Inc., a biotechnology company working to develop treatments for cancers and infectious diseases, and NewVac LLC, a Russian subsidiary of ChemRar High Tech Center, announced that NewVac has been granted an exclusive license to manufacture, market and sell Agenus’ Oncophage® vaccine in the Russian Federation and CIS countries. NewVac will also pursue a development program for the vaccine in conjunction with co-adjuvant technology.
Oncophage is designed to reprogram the body’s immune system to target only the cancer cells, leaving the healthy tissue unaffected and limiting the depilating side effects. The drug was tested in clinical trials on nearly 800 patients in Russia, North America and Europe showing positive results for treating multiple cancers. It is currently in Phase 2 trials for newly diagnosed and recurrent glioma. Since 2008, Oncophage has been approved in Russia as a treatment for kidney cancer patients who are at intermediate risk for recurrence of the disease. The vaccine was named the best therapeutic vaccine by the World Vaccine Congress in 2009.
“We are very excited to work with NewVac as an innovative scientific partner that is ready to both establish an Oncophage manufacturing facility in Russia and to commercialize this unique personalized cancer vaccine. In addition, the planned development efforts for Oncophage in combination with NewVac’s co-adjuvant will provide us with an opportunity to explore how Oncophage can contribute even more to patient care,” said Garo H. Armen, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of Agenus Inc in a press statement. “This agreement brings us a step closer to making this product available to patients and driving further innovation in the cancer immunotherapy field.”
“Our goal is to create an innovative world-class biomedical platform for the treatment of oncologic diseases based on immunotherapeutic approaches in Russia. We analyzed all available types of cancer immunotherapies from the Russian and global markets and selected the Agenus technology to advance our development programs. NewVac has established clinical studies of a co-adjuvant small molecule to be used in combination with immunotherapeutic tumor vaccines. We are honored to commit our research platform to such a noble cause and we plan to conduct clinical studies in combination with Oncophage in Russia in 2012,” said Nikolay Savchuk, Chairman of the Board of NewVac in a press release.
Kidney cancer or Renal Cell carcinoma (RCC) accounts for almost 90 percent of all kidney tumors and about one third of all patients develop metastatic disease by the time it is diagnosed. RCC also recurs in 20-40% of patients with localized tumors. In Russia, there were approximately 16,329 new case of kidney cancer in 2004 with about 10,872 deaths according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer; despite early detection there is only a 5-year survival rate for patients with locally advanced disease. Currently there are no approved therapies for the treatment of localized disease in the EU.
For more information, please visit www.agenusbio.com and www.newvac.ru
Let us hear your thoughts below:
