4 April 2019 - - US-based biotechnology company Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. will present late-breaking preclinical data which shows that its' investigational nucleic acid platform, UNITE, may enhance antitumor immunity when used in connection with its investigational DNA vaccine, ITI-7000, the company said.

In preclinical studies, ITI-7000, an investigational DNA vaccine targeting ErbB2/HER2, demonstrated robust activation of known anti-tumor CD4 and CD8 cells in vivo and promoted tumor infiltration with activated CD8 T cells.

These data will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 2019 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

In addition to observing activation of known anti-tumor CD4 and CD8 cells in vivo, Immunomic scientists observed the overexpression of PDL1 in the tumor microenvironment.

This pathway has shown clinical relevance as a cancer immunotherapy target of the tumor microenvironment.

PDL1 overexpression upregulated by ITI-7000 suggests that a combination of ITI-7000 with an anti-PD1/PDL1 therapy may increase the therapeutic potential of either agent on its own.

This data also supports the prevailing belief in the immunotherapy community that cancer vaccination could synergize with anti PD1 and PDL1 and other immunotherapies, as well as support the viability of the UNITE platform as a means to do so.

In summary, these findings support the potential of ITI-7000 as a cancer vaccine and highlight that UNITE, Immunomic's nucleic acid platform, may have the potential to enhance immunity of investigational cancer therapies.

ITI's investigational UNITE platform, or UNiversal Intracellular Targeted Expression, is thought to work by encoding the Lysosomal Associated Membrane Protein, an endogenous protein in humans.

In this way, ITI's vaccines (DNA or RNA) have the potential to utilize the body's natural biochemistry to develop a broad immune response including antibody production, cytokine release and critical immunological memory.

This approach could put UNITE technology at the crossroads of immunotherapies in a number of illnesses, including cancer, allergy and infectious diseases.

UNITE is currently being employed in Phase II clinical trials as a cancer immunotherapy.

ITI is also collaborating with academic centers and biotechnology companies to study the use of UNITE in cancer types of high mortality, including cases where there are limited treatment options like glioblastoma and acute myeloid leukemia.

ITI believes that these early clinical studies may provide a proof of concept for UNITE therapy in cancer, and if successful, set the stage for future studies, including combinations in these tumor types and others.

Preclinical data is currently being developed to explore whether LAMP nucleic acid constructs may amplify and activate the immune response in highly immunogenic tumor types and be used to create immune responses to tumor types that otherwise do not provoke an immune response.

Immunomic Therapeutics, is a privately-held, clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of vaccines through its proprietary technology platform, UNiversal Intracellular Targeted Expression (UNITE), which is designed to utilise the body's natural biochemistry to develop vaccines that generate broad immune responses.

ITI's UNITE platform could potentially have broad therapeutic applications in oncology, including viral antigens, cancer antigens, neoantigens and antigen-derived antibodies as biologics and ITI has built a large pipeline from UNITE with six oncology programs and two allergy programmes.

ITI has entered into a significant allergy partnership with Astellas Pharma and has formed several academic collaborations with leading Immuno-oncology researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, Duke University. ITI maintains its headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.