CRO

Accelovance, Immunicum partner to advance cancer vaccine

Sweden’s Immunicum has signed a transatlantic partnership with Rockville, MD’s Accelovance to further its lead cancer immune primer Intuvax through U.S. tests in kidney cancer and melanoma.

The arrangement will see Accelovance provide clinical monitoring, data management, biostatistics and safety services for the trials, while Immunicum will oversee quality standards regarding patient safety and compliance. Immunicum additionally gets access to the CRO’s Preferred Sites Network through cooperation with the Midwest Melanoma Partnership.

The partners will work with Intuvax, a dendritic cell vaccine that Immunicum hopes can elicit an inflammatory response triggering the activation of cytotoxic T lymphocytes to fight tumors.

Immunicum also stands to gain from the contributions of Dr. Arkadiusz Dudek, director of the Oncology Clinical Trials Office at the University of Illinois' College of Medicine, who will serve as lead investigator in the U.S.

"We believe we have found the best collaboration scenario to aid us with our company's next step in clinical development,” Immunicum CEO Jamal El-Mosleh said in a statement. “This new agreement underscores our commitment to researching the effectiveness of Intuvax as a cancer immune primer in additional indications and expands our research capabilities tremendously.”

Founded in 2005 with locations around the U.S. and the world, Accelovance has expertise in the areas of oncology, vaccines and general medicine. Immunicum, for its part, is aiming to create “the blue-print for the world's first personalized, off-the-shelf affordable cancer treatment” and plans to license its tech to pharma or biotech companies in the field.

- here’s the release