Cancer Immunotherapy at PopVax

There has been substantial progress in oncology over the last 50 years in treating blood cancers, skin cancers, and lung cancers, and in particular over the last 20 years with the introduction of checkpoint inhibitors, CAR-T therapies, and other immunotherapies. Today, with access to modern standard-of-care therapies, the average 5-year survival rate for all cancers is over 50%. Nevertheless, many solid tumours, including liver cancers, pancreatic cancers, and brain cancers, remain a death sentence to this day, with 80% or more of patients dying within 5 years.

Consider pancreatic cancer – the 5-year survival rate for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the subtype of the overwhelming majority of pancreatic cancer cases, is under 10%. Each year, around half a million people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer across the world, and over 450,000 people die from the disease, with the United States alone accounting for more than 60,000 new cases and 50,000 deaths. These numbers appear to have more than doubled since 1990, and the number of pancreatic cancer patients under the age of 55 has been increasing on an even more rapid trajectory, particularly in younger women.

An effective therapy for PDAC would not only save hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives across the world, but also spare millions more the unbearable, indescribable pain of losing their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters in the blink of an eye to the ravages of this deadly disease.

We intend to rapidly develop and advance multiple first-in-class immunotherapies against liver cancer (HCC), pancreatic cancer (PDAC) into Phase I clinical trials over the course of the next 2 years. We will only develop therapeutics that are designed to provide a step-change improvement over the current standard of care for these cancers, and have the potential to meaningfully extend the lifespans of patients without eviscerating quality of life. Our HCC and PDAC candidates are built to disrupt the tumor microenviroment and mediate potent but highly-specific cytotoxicity towards cancer cells, while minimally troubling healthy cells.

This is, however, only the first step of our plan to defeat the emperor of all maladies.

Cancer is a wily adversary. It takes many forms and wears many faces, shifting shapes in the shadows, poking and prodding at our immune defenses until it finds a weakness or three to metastasize through. It suppresses and exhausts immune cells in its vicinity, even recruiting them to its cause. Shining a light through the fog reveals the silhouette of a hydra that grows a new head somewhere different than the one you cut off the last time.

But if the disease can adapt, so perhaps should the cure? We must fight fire with fire and conjure an immunotherapy as crafty and ruthless as cancer itself, less a single bullet than a swarm of drones attacking from all sides with all manner of explosives and ammunition, trapping the serpent in a surprise pincer movement.

We intend to accomplish this by building on our HCC and PDAC immunotherapies to create machine learning-powered pipeline to deliver custom-designed programmable immunotherapies for each patient from sequence to bedside within weeks, aiming to not merely control each patient's cancer, but cure it outright.

If the idea of outfoxing cancer excites you, join us and help us make this vision a reality!

If you're interested in talking with us about personalized cancer immunotherapy, email personalized [at] popvax.com