NexImmune Establishes Research Initiative with City of Hope to Focus on Novel Immunotherapeutic Approaches to Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Current TAP Partner
GAITHERSBURG, MD - October 27, 2020 - NexImmune, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing unique non-genetically-engineered T cell immunotherapies, announced today that it has signed a research initiative related to its AIM nanoparticle technology with City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases.
City of Hope is a participating clinical site in the ongoing Phase 1/2 study of NEXI-001. The cancer center will leverage both patient samples from the ongoing NexImmune Phase 1/2 clinical study of NEXI-001 in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients with relapsed disease after allogeneic stem cell transplantation and the center’s tumor repository bank of primary leukemia samples, one of the largest collections in the world, to drive the research.
A key objective of the research will focus on the identification of new antigen targets that are expressed on both leukemic blasts as well as leukemic stem cells, and those which represent survival proteins to both. Once identified, these antigen targets will be loaded on NexImmune AIM-nanoparticles to expand antigen-specific CD8+ T cells, and evaluated in pre-clinical models for anti-tumor potency, tumor-specific killing, and response durability. In addition, the research initiative will aim to further understand different mechanisms of tumor escape, such as tumor antigen and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) downregulation due to immune pressure.
LLS partnered with NexImmune in October 2017 for the development of products like NEXI-001 through our Therapy Acceleration Program® (TAP).