Project description
Restoring immune system response in cancer patients
Recent advances in cancer immunotherapy after introduction of immune checkpoint inhibitors demonstrated great potential by achieving previously impossible 5-year survival rates for patients with metastatic cancers. However, a great number of patients worldwide remain unresponsive to immunotherapy and often do not have any other therapeutic options. French biotech start-up Stimunity aims to address this problem through the development of new drugs that activate the stimulator of interferon genes pathway to restore the innate immune system of these unresponsive patients and induce a potent and durable antitumour immune response. The company strategy is based on a safe virus-like particle technology that allows to encapsulate the best-known natural activators and efficiently deliver them into immune cells. The EU-funded STI-001 project will allow Stimunity to confirm the feasibility of the technological approach, assess regulatory issues, and validate the marketing and business plans.
Objective
Stimunity is a company that develops disruptive immuno-stimulatory biological drugs to restore the immune system against tumor cells.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors showed great potential in cancer immunotherapy after achieving 5-year survival rates for patients with advanced or metastatic cancers, unseen by physicians before. This is a promising beginning. Nevertheless, 5 million patients worldwide remain unresponsive to immunotherapy and do not have any other therapeutic option. On average it represents 50% of all cancers.
A promising answer to this problem is the development of new drugs that activate the STING (STimulator of INterferon Genes) pathway, which fires up the innate immune system of these unresponsive patients, inducing a potent and durable anti-tumour immune response. It is expected to be effective on a much larger number of cancer patients.
Stimunity’s first product, named STI-001, restores weakened immune systems to kill tumour cells. It is especially effective on distant tumours. Competitors using chemical STING ligands have shown a much weaker immune response than STI-001. STI-001 is based on a safe cutting-edge Virus-Like Particle (VLP) technology that encapsulates the best-known natural STING ligand and efficiently deliver it into immune cells.
There is high interest in STI-001, as demonstrated by public and private funding (raised €2.2M to date) and advanced discussions with major pharmaceutical companies (see Letters of Intent).
SMEi1 project will allow Stimunity to i) confirm the technical feasibility of manufacturing STI-001, (ii) update the FTO, (iii) assess regulatory issues, (iv) validate the marketing and business plan.
Our long-term goal is to develop a pipeline of products based on proprietary VLPs in cancer immunotherapy and create a long term out-licensing strategy as a worldwide leader in VLP-based immunotherapy.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
75008 Paris
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.