Clinical translation of cancer immunotherapies remains very challenging since 60-80% of patients fail to respond. The core of immunotherapy stands in identifying tumour-specific fingerprints – the neoantigens – that are peptides expressed uniquely by cancer cells, capable of triggering an efficient immune response against cancer. Currently, there is no standard method to identify neoantigens and the few methods available have significant limitations by being quite long, complicated and resource demanding in terms of knowledge, expertise, laboratory equipment and consumables. This limits their availability to a few well-equipped laboratories, hindering the broader application of personalized cancer immunotherapies that require efficient, sample-conserving, and cost-effective antigen identification technologies.
Valo Therapeutics (ValoTx) addresses this critical gap with PeptiCHIP, an innovative platform integrating a microfluidic pre-analytical immunoaffinity purification device with mass spectrometry analysis and antigen prioritization software. This technology revolutionizes antigen profiling by allowing the identification of relevant antigens without prior knowledge of their sequences, applicable to cancer, autoimmune, inflammatory, and infectious diseases. PeptiCHIP simplifies the process significantly, delivering rapid, accurate results with minimal sample usage and reduced costs.
PeptiCHIP is set to transform the clinical development of immunotherapies by offering a more precise and efficient method for neoantigen identification. This is crucial for developing therapies that precisely target the unique aspects of each patient’s tumour, enhancing the success rates of immunotherapy treatments. By addressing these technological limitations, PeptiCHIP will empower immunotherapy companies, clinicians, and researchers with more meaningful and cost-effective neoantigen identification, supporting the personalized medical treatment landscape in oncology, as well as infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases. This innovation stands to enhance the application of immunotherapies by ensuring more patients can benefit from tailored, effective treatment protocols, potentially improving outcomes in the challenging field of cancer treatment and beyond.
PeptiCHIP has the potential to overcome these hurdles in the clinical translation of personalized cancer immunotherapies and further facilitate development of novel neoantigen-based immunotherapies. During the project, the device and software were developed to provide valuable tools for basic and pre-clinical research on the immunopeptidome, which is a critical component for understanding the immune system as a whole. The EIC Transition project PeptiCHIP (4/2023-9/2025) focused on further technology development, testing, pre-clinical validation, and demonstration activities, maturing PeptiCHIP to TRL 6 together with an extensive business plan for efficient scale-up manufacturing and market entry.
