Achilles Therapeutics Announces Grant of US and European Patents
August 25 2021 - 8:00AM
Achilles Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: ACHL), a clinical-stage
biopharmaceutical company developing precision T cell therapies to
treat solid tumors, today announced that US patent US 11,098,121
and European patent EP3347039B have been granted. The patents cover
a method of identifying cancer patients that are likely to respond
to a checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) by determining the total number of
clonal neoantigens or the ratio of clonal to subclonal neoantigens
in patients’ cancer cells. Clonal neoantigens are neoantigens
present on all tumor cells and absent from healthy tissue.
The patents are based on data showing that
patients with higher numbers of clonal neoantigens respond better
to checkpoint inhibitor therapies1. These initial findings have
been confirmed in later studies showing that clonal tumor mutation
burden was the strongest predictor of CPI response across seven
different tumor types and three different classes of CPIs in over
1,000 CPI-treated patients2.
“This is another important step in building our
intellectual property position around our precision T cell therapy
platform, supporting our approach of targeting clonal neoantigens
that we identify with our proprietary PELEUS® bioinformatics
platform,” said Dr Iraj Ali, CEO of Achilles
Therapeutics. “This adds to the growing body of data
underpinning our thesis that clonal neoantigens are the best
targets in solid tumor therapy. Our technology allows us to
prospectively determine and target all of a patient’s unique,
clonal neoantigens and expand the clonal neoantigen-reactive T
cells, or cNeT, and ensure that these reactivities are present in
the final medicinal product with use of our potency release
assay.”
The patents are assigned to Cancer Research
Technology and licensed exclusively to Achilles in certain fields.
The inventors include three of Achilles’ co-founders, Dr Sergio
Quezada, Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Karl Peggs, Chief Medical
Officer, and Professor Charles Swanton, a Royal Society Napier
Professor of Cancer and Chief Clinician at Cancer Research UK, as
well as Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute and
UCL.
“Achilles continues to advance their development
of precision T cell therapies for solid tumor cancers. These
patents are illustrative of the pioneering work that Achilles and
Cancer Research UK have done in the field of clonal neoantigens,”
said Tony Hickson, Chief Business Officer of
Cancer Research UK.
1McGranahan et al 2016, Science,
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/14632Litchfield et
al 2021, Cell,
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00002-7.pdf
About Achilles TherapeuticsAchilles is a
clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing precision T
cell therapies targeting clonal neoantigens: protein markers unique
to the individual that are expressed on the surface of every cancer
cell. The Company has two ongoing Phase I/IIa trials, the CHIRON
trial in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)
and the THETIS trial in patients with recurrent or metastatic
melanoma. Achilles uses DNA sequencing data from each patient,
together with its proprietary PELEUS™ bioinformatics platform, to
identify clonal neoantigens specific to that patient, and then
develop precision T cell-based product candidates specifically
targeting those clonal neoantigens.
About Cancer Research
UK’s Commercial Partnerships Team Cancer Research UK is
the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives
through research. Cancer Research UK’s
specialist Commercial Partnerships Team works closely with leading
international cancer scientists and their institutes to protect
intellectual property arising from their research and to establish
links with commercial partners. Cancer Research
UK’s commercial activity operates through Cancer Research
Technology Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cancer Research UK.
It is the legal entity which pursues drug discovery research in
themed alliance partnerships and delivers
varied commercial partnering arrangements.
http://commercial.cancerresearchuk.org/
Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release
contains express or implied forward-looking statements that are
based on our management's belief and assumptions and on information
currently available to our management. Although we believe that the
expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are
reasonable, these statements relate to future events or our future
operational or financial performance, and involve known and unknown
risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual
results, performance or achievements to be materially different
from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or
implied by these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking
statements in this press release represent our views as of the date
of this press release. We anticipate that subsequent events and
developments will cause our views to change. However, while we may
elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in
the future, we have no current intention of doing so except to the
extent required by applicable law. You should therefore not rely on
these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of
any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
Further information:
Lee M. Stern – VP, IR & External
Communications+1 (332)
373-2634l.stern@achillestx.com
Consilium Strategic CommunicationsMary-Jane
Elliott, Sukaina Virji, Melissa Gardiner+44 (0) 203 709
5000achillestx@consilium-comms.com
Achilles Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ACHL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Achilles Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ACHL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024