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() has appointed Medical University of Vienna Professor of Vaccinology Dr Ursula Wiedermann as its chief scientific officer.
Notably she worked as the principal investigator for the preclinical development of the company’s HER-Vaxx peptide vaccine for HER-2 positive gastric and breast cancer alongside Professor Christophe Zielinski.
Together they performed the Phase I Clinical trial of HER-Vaxx in metastatic breast cancer patients.
Wiedermann has a distinguished scientific career with a particular interest in immunology and vaccines with over 110 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals to her credit.
She currently serves on the company’s scientific advisory board.
“This is a real coup for Imugene and we are delighted to have a scientist of such international renown as Prof Dr Wiedermann formalise her position in the Company as CSO” managing director Charles Walker said.
“Ursula is a founding inventor of HER-Vaxx and her resume reflects her extraordinary prowess as a scientist physician and educator and confirms her status as one of the leading lights in immuno-oncology globally.
“The CSO appointment is part of our ongoing initiative to put in place a first class management team capable of realizing the very significant opportunity that is our HER-Vaxx technology.”
Wiedermann added:
“Since my first introduction to Imugene several years ago I have strongly supported the HER-Vaxx development strategy and believe both our interests are aligned in bringing this exciting cancer technology to market as soon as possible.
“As the coinventor of the science and my new closer role in the company we can surely develop HER-Vaxx in a shorter time-frame.”
Recent Activity
In May the company released research that demonstrated promising inhibition of tumour cells by its Her-Vaxx peptide vaccine for HER-2 positive gastric and breast cancer compared with Roche’s Herceptin drug in tumour model.
In empirical work pre-clinical data showed that a higher dose of HER-Vaxx is able to inhibit cancer cell growth 70% greater than Herceptin.
While clinical trials are required to confirm this the result is promising given that Herceptin generated annualised sales of $6.9 billion.
The Phase 1b/2 clinical trial remains on track to begin in the second half of 2015.
Phase 1b is designed to confirm low toxicity and select the optimal dose from three different doses of HER-Vaxx while Phase 2 will use the dose identified in Phase 1b and assess clinical efficacy of HER-Vaxx in two groups of 34 patients in a placebo-controlled trial design.
This trial will improve understand of HER-Vaxx’s functioning from an early stage including showing the increased modulation of the immune system and demonstrating again the production of HER-2 antibodies by patients’ immune systems
Adding interest the trial will use a re-formulation of Her-Vaxx that shows more rapid and greater anti-cancer antibody production.
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