UK cancer charity partners with Asterias Biotherapies on lung cancer vaccine

The charity Cancer Research UK and its commercialization arm Cancer Research Technology (CRT), have reached an agreement with US biotech firm Asterias Biotherapeutics, a subsidiary of BioTime Inc (NYSE MKT: BTX), to take forward Asterias’ novel immunotherapy treatment AST-VAC2 into clinical trials in subjects with non-small cell lung cancer.

AST-VAC2 represents the 10th treatment to enter Cancer Research UK’s Clinical Development Partnerships (CDP) scheme, with six having progressed into the clinic to date. CDP is a joint initiative between Cancer Research UK’s Drug Development Office (DDO) and Cancer Research Technology, to develop promising anti-cancer agents which pharmaceutical companies do not have the resources to progress through early phase clinical trials.

AST-VAC2 is a non-patient specific (allogeneic) cancer vaccine designed to stimulate patients’ immune systems to attack telomerase, a protein that is expressed in over 95%  of cancers but is rarely expressed in normal adult cells.