Project description
Targeting human endogenous retroviruses for cancer immunotherapy
Ovarian cancer represents one of the deadliest cancers in women. Due to its late-stage diagnosis, it is associated with poor survival rates. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the OVACell project aims to address this medical challenge with an innovative TCR-T cell therapy targeting non conventional antigens derived from human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). Although HERVs are remnants of ancient retroviral infections and typically inactive, they can become abnormally expressed in cancer cells, and this has been observed across a high proportion of patients. Based on data science and AI analysis, researchers have identified antigens with promising efficacy in in vitro and ovarian cancer animal models. ErVimmune will develop this product candidate by scaling-up its small-scale manufacturing process and demonstrating its efficacy and safety in humans.
Objective
Ovarian cancer represents the most lethal gynecological cancer and one of the deadliest cancers in women globally, it affected more than 80 0000 women worldwide in 2022 and killed 207000 the same year, 25000 only in Europe. A woman's risk of getting ovarian cancer during her lifetime is about 1 in 78.
Due to the non-specific nature of the symptoms, it is hard to early detect ovarian cancer, and there is currently a lack of effective screening tools for an early diagnosis. Consequently, 75% of patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage leading to poor outcomes, and strongly reducing their chances for survival: only 30-40% five years after diagnosis.
Even though several treatments are currently approved for ovarian cancer, they present several limitations and fail to meet the high medical need. Indeed, 2/3 of patients do not respond to available treatments or relapse after 1st- and 2nd-line treatment.
ErVaccine aims to provide an innovative solution by developing a new generation of TCR-T cell therapy targeting non-conventional antigens. With its advanced proprietary bioinformatic platform, ErVaccine successfully identified antigens derived from human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) that exhibit abnormal expression exclusively in cancer cells and shared by a high proportion of patients. From this work, the company developed TCR-OV1, a TCRT-cell therapy with a demonstrated efficacy profile in in vitro and ovarian cancer animal models. We expect no major safety concern as we did not observe any toxicity in our preclinical models and based on the specific HERV expression in the tumors.
Now, ErVaccine wants to accelerate the development of its solution by scaling-up its small-scale manufacturing process and demonstrating in humans the efficacy and safety of TCR-OV1.
TCR-OV1 has the potential to be a transformative therapy for ovarian cancer, being the first safe and efficient TCR-T cell therapy in this indication.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology immunotherapy
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-EIC-ACC-BF - HORIZON EIC Accelerator Blended Finance
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2023-ACCELERATOR-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
69008 LYON
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
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