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IngenOx Therapeutics, the clinical stage Oxford biopharma company announced today the results of collaborative work between the University of Oxford using its zabadinostat drug. In experimental models, zabadinostat was found to potentiate both the cellular and humoral arms of the adaptive immune response. Most significantly, zabadinostat enhanced the adaptive immune response against the COVID19 virus vaccine. This remarkable property was observed in otherwise healthy animals and therefore argues that zabadinostat can be deployed clinically to enhance the immune response against vaccines.
The study, published in Communications Biology (https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04485-y), showed that zabadinostat treatment increased the activity of different arms of the immune response, including dendritic cells, and caused enhanced levels of antigen-specific T lymphocytes. Further, zabadinostat stimulated the level of neutralising antibodies and T lymphocytes targeting the COVID19 spike protein during vaccination.
Nick La Thangue, CEO of IngenOx, and Professor of Cancer Biology at the University of Oxford commented:
“Our results argue strongly that zabadinostat has potential to augment diverse therapeutic agents that act through the immune system. A new angle to our focus will now assess whether zabadinostat effects the immune response to vaccination in humans. This opens the door for IngenOx to find new clinical utilities for zabadinostat and thus realise its true therapeutic potential. These are very interesting and enlightening results, and we look forward to exploring the relevance in human subjects.”
David Kerr, CMO of IngenOx and Professor of Cancer Medicine at the University of Oxford:
“As we age, our immune systems age with us, potentially reducing the effectiveness of a range of vaccines. These fascinating observations offer great hope that zabadinostat can be repurposed as an adjuvant, or aid, to improve the effectiveness of vaccines. These new data provide a strong rationale to build on our existing clinical experience of zabadinostat as a well tolerated anticancer drug to initiate human vaccine trials.”
Notes:About IngenOx Therapeutics
IngenOx Therapeutics is a bio-pharmaceutical company focused on delivering new precision medicine drugs and vaccines to treat the most difficult cancers and related diseases. It is a spinout from the University of Oxford, and is located in the Oxford Science Park, UK.
The company’s approach seeks to align the right drug with the right patient enabling a targeted precision medicine approach to cancer therapy. It has also built a proprietary platform focused on re-educating the body’s immune system to recognise and destroy tumours. The assets in its pipeline have displayed convincing clinical benefits to late-stage cancer patients through disease control, tumour shrinkage, reduced side effects, and extended survival times.
IngenOx has secured institutional investment from Asian investors in addition to Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and has signed global license partnerships with AstraZeneca and Roche.