Apeiron announces start of phase I trail with cellular anti cancer therapy

03-Mar-2015 - Austria

Apeiron Biologics AG announced that a first patient has been treated as part of a phase I clinical trial with Apeiron’s individual cellular therapy APN401. The investigator-initiated trial is performed at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (WFBMC) led by Pierre L. Triozzi, professor of internal medicine at WFBMC’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, North Carolina, USA.

The trial studies the safety, tolerability and optimal dose of autologous, peripheral immune cells silenced ex-vivo for the Cbl-b gene, a completely novel approach to support the immune system’s ability to fight cancer via checkpoint blockade.

“There are factors in immune cells that hamper their ability to efficiently kill cancer cells. Achieving a so-called ‘checkpoint blockade’ by treating certain blood derived immune cells ex-vivo with a small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) to silence the Cbl-b gene helps those cells to more efficiently kill cancer cells after re-infusion," said Pierre L. Triozzi. “Such activation of the immune system could in principle be applied for treatment of any type of cancer, and also in combination with other immunotherapies such as other checkpoint blockades or cancer vaccination approaches,” he added.

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