Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute and Scancell Holdings PLC Form Partnership to Advance Lung Cancer Vaccine Clinical Trials

SAN CARLOS, California, January 30, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute ("ALCMI"), the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation ("ALCF") and Scancell Holdings PLC ("Scancell") today announce a collaboration to evaluate the use of Scancell's second innovative cancer vaccine, SCIB2, from its ImmunoBody® platform to treat non-small cell lung cancer ("NSCLC").

Scancell's ImmunoBody® cancer vaccine platform is a novel immunotherapy treatment under development that stimulates the immune system to potentially treat and prevent cancer. The Company recently successfully completed a Phase 1/2 clinical trial with SCIB1 in patients with melanoma.

The Addario Advanced Collaboration Program brings patients into clinical trials from ALCMI's extensive research consortium of international researchers and member institutions and ALCF's patient support programs. ALCMI plans to assist Scancell in the design and development of a Phase 1/2 clinical trial with SCIB2 in patients with NSCLC which is planned to begin in 2018 and complete approximately 18 months later.

"This partnership enables us to access an important clinical program that could also accelerate the development of this groundbreaking immunotherapy technology," said ALCMI President and COO Steven Young. "Combining our two foundations' unique resources will increase patient engagement with the goal to bring new treatment options to non-small cell lung cancer patients," added Bonnie J. Addario, a 12-year lung cancer survivor and founder and chair of ALCF and founder of ALCMI.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lung cancer accounts for 27 percent of all cancer deaths, more than breast, prostate and colon cancer combined. More than 228,000 people receive a cancer diagnosis in the United States alone and more than 160,000 will not survive. It remains one of the most difficult cancers to treat.

"Immunotherapy has dramatically improved many patients' outcomes across various cancer types. One of the next steps is how we can further enhance the immune response to cancer. Early clinical data on ImmunoBody® suggests it is extremely well tolerated and may significantly improve outcomes, which would be ideal. I'm excited to work with Scancell and hopeful that we will take another important step in the fight against lung cancer," said Jacob M. Sands, MD, assistant professor, medical oncology, Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts.

SCIB2 has the potential to complement existing treatments and has potential value where current treatments either do not work or are not available. By stimulating immune responses to specific lung cancer antigens, SCIB2 should assist the body in targeting and fighting NSCLC, leading to longer survival rates.

"We have generated preclinical data that suggests that SCIB2 could be the ideal complement to existing and emerging checkpoint inhibitor therapies to treat NSCLC and so provide an effective new potential treatment option for patients with this devastating disease," said Scancell CEO Richard Goodfellow.

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 596/2014 (MAR).

About the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) 

The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI, voiced as "Alchemy") was founded by advanced stage lung cancer survivor Bonnie J Addario in 2008 as a nonprofit organization. Working in tandem with our "partner" foundation the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF), ALCMI and ALCF contribute resources and join together to power collaborative, patient-centric initiatives in genetic (molecular) testing, therapeutic discoveries, targeted treatments and early detection. ALCMI overcomes barriers to collaboration via a world-class team of investigators from 25 institutions in the USA, UK and Europe, supported by dedicated research infrastructures such as centralized project management and biorepositories and data systems. ALCMI directly facilitates research by combining scientific expertise found at leading academic institutions with patient access through our network of community cancer centers - accelerating novel research advancements to lung cancer patients. By providing access to critical masses of patient stakeholders, academic, community and industry researchers, ALCMI, in partnership with the ALCF, is making progress towards its goal of transforming lung cancer into a chronically managed disease by 2023.

About the Addario Advanced Collaboration Program 

The Addario Advances Collaboration Program accelerates novel therapeutic medical device and diagnostics into patient trials. The program incentivizes the collaboration of the non-profit community and emerging life science companies to reduce development times, improve clinical trial designs, reduce costs and, most critically, accelerates more effective diagnostics and therapies to lung cancer patients globally.

About Scancell  

Scancell is developing novel immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer based on its ImmunoBody® and Moditope® technology platforms.  Scancell's first ImmunoBody®, SCIB1 is being developed for the treatment of melanoma.  Data from the Phase 1/2 clinical trial demonstrate that SCIB1, when used as monotherapy, has a marked effect on tumour load, produces a melanoma-specific immune response and highly encouraging survival trend without serious side effects.  In patients with resected disease there is increasing evidence to suggest that SCIB1 may delay or prevent disease recurrence.

Scancell's ImmunoBody® vaccines target dendritic cells and stimulate both parts of the cellular immune system: the helper cell system where inflammation is stimulated at the tumour site and the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte or CTL response where immune system cells are primed to recognise and kill specific cells.

Pre-clinical data on a combination of SCIB1 or SCIB2 and checkpoint inhibition (blockade of the PD-1 or CTLA-4 immune checkpoint pathways) have shown enhanced tumour destruction and significantly longer survival times than when either treatment was used alone.  Experimental data suggests that the high avidity T cells induced by ImmunoBody® vaccines increase expression of PDL-1 on the tumour cell surface, thereby making the tumours more sensitive to checkpoint inhibitor drugs.  Re-challenging animals with tumour cells after SCIB1 treatment resulted in 100% survival suggesting that ImmunoBody® induces a powerful memory response.  Such an effect has not been observed with checkpoint inhibitors.

Scancell has also identified and patented a series of modified epitopes that stimulate the production of killer CD4+ T cells that destroy tumours without toxicity.  The Directors believe that the Moditope® platform could play a major role in the development of safe and effective cancer immunotherapies in the future.

SOURCE Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) and Scancell Holdings PLC