Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Syst-Onco-Herpes (Systemic delivery of oncolytic herpes simplex viruses retargeted to cancer-specific receptors. Virus optimization and business planning.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-05-01 al 2023-10-31
A Holy Grail in OV field is the possibility to administer them by systemic (i.v.) routes, so that in the human body OVs search for metastases (Hill, 2019). In reality, very few OVs are administered i.v.; they are small viruses with limited genome capacity and are not cancer-specific.
The idea taken to POC was to identify obstacles that constrain the systemic administration of HER2-ReHVs, to develop novel strategies to overcome them and to design initiatives for the development and commercialization of ReHVs. The Syst-Onco-Herpes initiatives were aimed at progressing ReHVs into clinical experimentation and ultimately into their use in patients. The project was divided into 4 Scientific and 3 Business Aims.
The business part of the project was quite successful and indeed put the basis for the translation of ReHVs to clinical experimentation (Development) and ultimately for their future commercialization and for societal benefit. Ultimately, this should increase therapeutic options for specific metastatic diseases. In practice, we carefully detailed the plan of the activities required to bring ReHVs to the IND deposit for authorization of clinical experimentation; (ii) carried out a Market analysis finalized to the benchmarking and positioning of ReHVs in the competitive landscape. (iii) Designed a Business Plan and strategies to search for investors/partners and further funding. The overall result of the Business activities is that the University of Bologna, that is the owner of the IP, signed an Agreement with a international biotech company to bring ReHVs to IND deposit, and, subsequently to further development and deposit of protocols for clinical studies.
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