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Sorry but your 12.55 is just not right. It's not a claim of the Moditope patent - it's part of the description and doesn't reflect the protection finally granted.

When a patent application is submitted, the claims are typically made as broad as possible in the full knowledge that the Examiner is likely to knock you back on some of them. When the Moditope application was first made in 2012, the first claim covered the PTMs of nitration of tyrosine, oxidation of tryptophan and deamination of glutamine or asparagine as well as citrullination.

As normal, there have been several rounds of examination of this patent and several sets of amended claims have been submitted by Scancell - the additional PTMs were dropped early on following objection by the Examiner so only citrullination is covered now.

The Moditope patent already granted does give broad protection but not that broad! The divisionals are adding to the scope of course. If you want to know precisely what claims are covered you have to look at the those listed in the final text that was approved for grant . Looking at the description or the first set of claims submitted just tells you what was originally applied for.

Yes, a clear and unequivocal confirmation that TCRs are covered by a published patent.

rats/Chelsea

As discussed last week, the European Patent Office has issued intention to grant notices for 2 Moditope patents. The good news is that it looks like the US enolase patent is also about to be granted.

As far as I know that just leaves one European and one US patent still outstanding. Obviously this doesn't include any applications for homocitrullinated peptides (Modi2) which are running along behind and will go through the usual processes. I may have missed one and I've only looked at US and European applications - other patent offices may still have outstanding applications. Would be interesting to see whether Konar is of the same view.

As for your last question rats, I think it is just pure coincidence that we happen to have had an update on Modi1. There's some way to go before Modi1 actually enters clinical trials, it isn't quite ready yet - according to Scancell it won't be until H1 2021. . Should be full steam ahead in terms of preclinical development now that the issue with one of the peptides has been resolved .

Ray, I agree!!

Ray,

Ray - the term ' a person closely associated with Martin Diggle' - the word 'person' simply refers to a legal entity, in this case the Vulpes Life Sciences Fund so it isn't a real person.

Ruck - my understanding is that transactions by funds (or even retail investors) only have to be disclosed when they cross a 3% threshold and thereafter every 1%. As Konar has mentioned, all director dealings must be notified no matter what the size. So for the purposes of disclosure, all Vulpes dealings must be notified as director dealings whether they cross any thresholds or not (because Martin Diggle is co-founder and portfolio manager at Vulpes).

Talking about Martin Diggle - not sure whether this has been posted before but here is an interview with GQ South Africa

https://www.gq.co.za/wealth/investing-in-the-future-of-medicine-martin-diggle-46719397

miavoce,

Yes, agree. Important that Scancell are able to get a decent sized funding away and that they have enough to do justice to the pipeline. I'm not expecting any huge reduction in cash burn due to COVID - after all the last Trinity update was in May and they should have been aware of any reductions in staff costs due to furloughing etc. The biggest saving is likely to be on SCIB1 trial which must be on hold at the moment but other big items such as patent costs are likely to be unaffected.

Just a quick comment re. the suggestion of forward selling from Vulpes. In view of the fact that Martin Diggle has a seat on the board of Scancell, it would be highly irregular for Vulpes to be forward selling into a placing so I think the sells are either coming from elsewhere or if they are from Vulpes, they surely can't then take part in any placing in the near future.

miavoce

I think they also had an R&D tax credit of £1.09m which came in December 2019 so that may give them a bit more breathing space but they certainly need funds sooner rather than later.

I have found that the Trinity Delta reports are quite useful when it comes to cash flow. They presumably are getting their information directly from the Company, so I guess it should be. They estimated that the cash position at the last Y/E (April 30th) was £3.5m and as you say, cash burn has been running at between £500 - £600k per month. Of course the big unknown is the impact of COVID-19, it's possible that cash burn has reduced due to lack of activity in the sector.

Inanaco,

I was referring to your 13.57 as you well know and please don't tell me how to post.

WTP,

As far as I know, GSK haven't received any funding at all from the UK Gov - it has received some from CEPI and it is using its own funds to develop a vaccine in collaboration with Sanofi but nothing from the UK Gov. Why drag their names into a Cummings conspiracy theory?

WTP

Um are you sure? I think you may have the wrong company.

WTP - what 's the relevance of GSK?

Inanaco,

I stand by that post and how dare you suggest that I was accusing anybody of wanting any vaccine to fail. I was simply pointing out that whilst there has been a great deal of criticism of the Oxford vaccine on here, there has been no discussion and virtually no recognition of the tremendous efforts and successes in many different area.

You'll be pleased to hear that this is my last post on the subject and then I'll back off for a while. Again while reading it, please remember I'm no fan of Boris.

You say: '

'And wasn't there an article saying the UK will be at the back of the queue if neither Oxford/Imperial work?'

What you could have said is that the UK has a chance of being at the front of the queue because it has one of the most advanced clinical trials in the world, it's one of only 7 countries with a vaccine in trials and one of just 3 with more than one. Yes it will be back of the queue if they both fail - so what?

You said:

'Where's the contingency?'

Other vaccines are receiving funding and a massive effort is being put into identifying effective therapies - again with the largest clinical trial in the world that has already produced results that will absolutely save lives. I'll keep asking - were there any other candidates that were turned down for funding? If you can't come up with any then it's hardly a fair question.

Putting Scancell to one side, I can't believe the negative tone on this bb when it comes to the response of UK industry and academia to this virus. It has been outstanding.

Inanaco,

We were told by the BOD that the failure of other cancer vaccine trials impacted on their ability to secure a deal or funding for SCIB1.

WTP

I actually completely agree with many of your comments about the Government but your posts have just confirmed exactly what I was saying - you're knocking these vaccines simply because they were funded by the Government. You admit you haven't done any research and if you did and if you viewed them as scientific projects perhaps you'd be able to appreciate the effort, achievement and contribution from hundreds of researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses etc. and thousands of patients .

This thread was meant to be positive - I very much regret starting it now.

Ah right - there must be another reason for the lack of a deal or funding for SCIB1 then. You can't have it both ways.

Inanaco,

You're right, you did attack the science and performance of the Oxford vaccine - nobody knows whether it will succeed or fail but if it fails, I'm sure you'll be back telling us that you were right and that AstraZeneca, BARDA, Prof. Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute, Professors Sarah Gilbert, Andrew Pollard, Teresa Lambe, Dr Sandy Douglas etc. etc. etc were all wrong and missed all the problems you have picked up. These are the scientific experts backing the Oxford vaccine - not some government official and please don't tell me that you think you understand more than they do. Also you have been very quiet about the Imperial vaccine - looking forward to your peer review of that one.

As for the decision to fund the Oxford and Imperial vaccines - are you aware of the usual process and how long it takes? As Chester has pointed out, the outset of a pandemic is not the time to wait for 3 or 4 levels of panel and committee review. At a time when you're competing with the rest of the world for manufacturing capacity, CRO/Clinical trial capacity and people are going to die in their thousands you have to make quick decisions. I'll ask again because so far nobody has come up with an answer - do you know of any vaccines that could have been up there with Oxford/Imperial but didn't get funding?

Now you're highlighting the failure of mRNA cancer vaccine trials and asking how that will pan out for Scancell. Has it crossed your mind that failure of the new wave of cancer vaccines will be bad, possibly even catastrophic for Scancell? We have already seen the impact of other failures on sCIB1. We don't want to go down that road again. Every failure makes funding and the chance of a deal that much more difficult for Scancell but hey, you carry on knocking.

WTP - please go back and read my posts with an open mind. As I have had to explain many times now, my posts were in response to those who were concerned that Scancell would never receive funding because they weren't part of the Oxbridge elite. I simply explained how and why the Oxford vaccine was so advanced, which is why it received funding. Does that make me a fan?

Are you aware of any vaccines that could have been in clinical trials right now that asked for funding and didn't get it? Were other candidates overlooked? You can be sure you'd have heard about them is there were. So, so easy to sit here and criticise but the fact that the UK has 2 front runner candidates in the clinic is fantastic - why do you have an issue with it?

WTP

Sorry WTP I have to correct you, that is simply not true. I'm not a big fan of the Oxford vaccine - I am a fan of the UK life sciences sector, not any particular vaccine. The way that both academia and industry has geared up and responded to COVID-19 so quickly and at such scale really is world leading. Whether it's the Oxford, Imperial vaccine or the Recovery trial the response has shown what can be done and the very best of the NHS too. Behind all these initiatives are people like Lindy Durrant, working their socks off and they deserve full credit. Unfortunately, the political environment in the UK means that their achievements are often undermined as people seem unable to separate them from politics.

The most important factor for me is that there is a successful vaccine as quickly as possible. If it's from China or the US then so be it but I'd love it to be from the UK.