Hookipa and DarwinHealth ink research collaboration

Hookipa Pharma has entered into a research collaboration and license agreement with DarwinHealth to develop novel immunotherapies based on the systematic discovery and prioritization of the next generation of immunogenic, tumor-specific cryptic antigens.

Under the terms of the agreement, DarwinHealth will utilize a combined single-cell transcriptome analysis and bioinformatics-based approach using both mouse and human cancerous and non-cancerous tissues to identify the next generation of shared “off-the-shelf” tumor-specific antigens. Hookipa will perform the validation experiments and be granted exclusive rights to the development, manufacturing and commercialization of products arising from the collaboration.

“Immunotherapy is one of the areas of greatest potential for future cancer treatment. Arguably, all antigen-specific immunotherapy is limited by the scarcity of known antigens. The current group of shared tumor self-antigens has been established for many years, and while more recent efforts have been aimed at identifying patient-specific neo-antigens, systematic attempts to identify the next generation of tumor self-antigens have not been pursued as aggressively,” said Dr Igor Matushansky, chief medical officer and global head of R&D of Hookipa. “This is why the primary objective of our next generation, antigen discovery program - entitled HIDE [Human Immunotranscript Discovery initiativE] - with DarwinHealth is to identify a novel constellation of shared self-antigens for multiple tumor subtypes. Our goal is that following a successful completion of the two-year program, antigens with validated immunogenicity will be deployed clinically as antigen-specific, vector-mediated immunotherapy using our TheraT vector.”