Anixa Biosciences gets rights to breast cancer vaccine

US biotech Anixa Biosciences (Nasdaq: ANIX) has established a strategic alliance and license agreement with Cleveland Clinic for an innovative breast cancer vaccine technology.  No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Anixa Biosciences shares were trading up 18.64% at $4.90 after the announcement, and closed up still 13.35% at $4.67 yesterday.

Cleveland Clinic researcher Dr Vincent Tuohy has been developing a method to vaccinate women against contracting breast cancer, focused specifically on triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), the most lethal form of the disease. He has identified a specific protein that is "retired" from service after a woman has given birth, but reappears in many forms of breast cancer, especially TNBC. Studies have shown that vaccinating against this protein, completely prevents breast cancer in mice. Anixa Biosciences will work with Dr Tuohy and a team at Cleveland Clinic to advance this vaccine to clinical trials in humans to verify the animal studies that demonstrated prevention of breast cancer.