Biopharma Business

The European Patent Office has issued a new patent to biotechnology company, CEL-SCI, for its lead investigational immunotherapy, which is undergoing a Phase III clinical trial for head and neck cancer.

Multikine, the company’s product, is a leukocyte interleukin injection and its mechanism of action to make tumours more visible to the immune system is currently being evaluated in the clinical trial.

“This is a key patent which along with the other Multikine issued patents addresses how Multikine enables the immune system to recognise and attack the tumour. One way tumour cells evade the immune system is by expressing human leukocyte antigens (HLA) on the tumor cell surface, thus appearing as ‘self’ to the immune cells and therefore the tumour cells are not attacked,” stated Eyal Talor, PhD, CEL-SCI’s chief scientific officer. “It is important to note that the tumours of the Multikine-treated responders in our prior Phase II studies had no HLA Class II expressed on the cell surface following Multikine treatment as compared to controls. This points to Multikine’s ability to modulate HLA expression on the tumour cell surface, thereby allowing the immune system to recognize and attack the tumour.”

Geert Kersten, CEO of CEL-SCI commented: “As we are now nearing the end of our Phase III study with Multikine in head and neck cancer, this recently issued European patent is very important. It further fortifies our IP estate, which includes a number of issued patents for Multikine in the US, Europe and other major world markets including Japan and China, where we hope to make Multikine available to patients, upon regulatory and marketing approval.”