The Assignment of the Viral Gene License to Liminatus Pharma, LLC has been completed.

Viral Gene’s cancer vaccine

Viral Gene is a company that develops virus-based cancer immunotherapeutics. Currently, Viral Gene is developing a Guanylyl Cyclase C (GCC) Cancer Vaccine known as Ad5.F35-hGCC-PADRE.

Dr. Scott A. Waldman began conducting research relating to GCC in the early 1980s. Dr. Waldman discovered that GCC is produced by intestinal cells normally, and universally after they transform to colorectal cancer cells. He demonstrated that when those cells metastasize outside the intestine, GCC could be used as a sensitive and specific biomarker to identify trace amounts of metastatic disease.

Upon discovering that expression of GCC can be utilized as a unique biomarker for detecting metastatic colorectal cancer, Dr. Waldman’s team developed cancer immunotherapeutics including the GCC Cancer Vaccine and GCC CAR-T cell therapeutics.

The GCC Cancer Vaccine being developed by Viral Gene recognizes cancer cell’s GCC and induces immune responses by activating CD8+T cells and B cells. Further, the vaccine prevents and treats recurrence and metastasis of colorectal cancer by destroying only the cancer cells metastasized from the large intestines without destroying the GCC and normal cells within the large intestines.

In November 2015, the safety of Ad5hGCC-PADRE was established in a successful U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) phase I clinical trial. The vaccine began an FDA phase IIa clinical trial in the fourth quarter of 2019.