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Link below but this is the relevant section:-

'A project led by Lindy Durrant, professor of cancer immunotherapy at the University of Nottingham, works by injecting the genetic code for the virus’s nucleocapsid, a spherical container that holds its genes, as well as the spike. “The nucleocapsid should continue to give protection even when the spike mutates,” Durrant said. Human trials should begin in the summer.'

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rapid-covid-mutations-mean-the-scientists-can-never-stand-still-c53fdzxfs

Yep good luck djframboise - hope we all get to cash in those CVRs

Kew - agree. Just a few minutes spent researching HER2 testing alone should give some indication of the potential here.

WTP

She was being interviewed as an independent academic expert, it would have been unethical and unprofessional to start touting a project she was involved in - she just couldn't do it even if she wanted to.

Look forward to the day when they're interviewing her and LD about Covidity and they can both wax lyrical to their hearts delight.

Excellent news and great to see 4D Pharma executing their strategy to exploit the full potential of MRx0518 by adding adding a PD-L1 combination in an earlier setting into the mix. The fact that they've signed a collaboration with another two major pharmas is a sign of the growing interest in this field.

Crumbs,

Exactly.

WTP has criticised the UK Vaccines Taskforce for not being proactive enough and being lacklustre towards other vaccines. The reality could not be further from the truth and when challenged, the only justification seems to be Guardian articles attacking Kate Bingham. Articles which incidentally are either incorrect or only tell half the story.

Kate Bingham gave up 6 months of her life and took on an unpaid role to run the Vaccines Taskforce. She has made a tremendous success of the job and together with her team will be directly responsible for saving many lives in this country. During this time her every move has been subject to the closest scrutiny from those who have been itching to find fault and who ran a negative media campaign against her. It's frustrating that still today we see her judged on that campaign rather than what she actually has done and has achieved.

WTP - your 19.13

Good grief, there's no pleasing some people.

The one beacon of light during this pandemic has been the fantastic performance of the UK Vaccines Taskforce. You complain that they should have been more proactive from the beginning but have you even checked to see which vaccines they ordered and when? If you have then how on earth have you arrived at the conclusion that it's not good enough? Thanks to their foresight and efforts, the UK is on track to become the first major country in the World to vaccinate its population. Do you think that's purely down to luck? You say support for other vaccines was lacklustre - which ones? Have a look at the charts in the link.

As for Scancell, funding of £2.7m is not a token by any stretch of the imagination and they have received a very similar amount as Oxford (at same stage).

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

IMO

WTP - good spot re. patents.

Have only had a quick look at the claims but looks like:-

1) WO/2021/019095 - BINDING MEMBERS relates to a glycan mAb

2) WO/2021/019094 - MODIFIED FC-REGIONS TO ENHANCE FUNCTIONAL AFFINITY OF ANTIBODIES AND ANTIGEN BINDING FRAGMENTS THEREOF is Avidimab

Worth noting the deal announced this week by Jazz Pharmaceuticals for the acquisition of GW Pharma for $7.2 billion - the biggest ever for a UK biotech. Relevant to all UK biotechs of course as a great example of what can happen when things go well but particularly relevant here as Redx already have already signed 2 deals with Jazz.

In 2019 Jazz bought Redx's pan-RAF inhibitor programme and a few months ago they doubled down with a second deal for the development of 2 more oncology candidates by Redx. Jazz turning out to be a supportive partner who are willing to splash the cash.

https://www.lifesciencesipreview.com/news/jazz-pharmaceuticals-acquires-uk-medical-cannabis-firm-for-7-2bn-4354

research-tree. com /media/ergomed-edison-open-house-interview-03-02-2021

Link below to Edison interview with Dr Miroslav Reljanovic. He seems very happy with 2020 performance - and so he should be.

https://*********************/media/ergomed-edison-open-house-interview-03-02-2021

Prop,

Who knows? Jo Wiley and the BOD have played a strategic blinder here and have already taken the market cap from about £38m to £380m in the space of a couple of years. Building blocks quietly being put in place to continue along that trajectory.

Michaelhighbar,

Yes, the update was very encouraging bearing in mind these are patients with advanced cancer who have exhausted all other treatment options.

The fact that the Part A patients have seen further tumour reduction is particularly noteworthy. We already know from previous updates that the addition of MRx0518 to treatment with Keytruda appears to have turned patients who had stopped responding to PD-1 CI's back into responders. We now know that it's not some transient effect whereby they develop new resistance to the combination - the update tells us that they continue to respond and have even seen further tumour shrinkage. Excellent news.

Remembering that these are patients with advanced cancer who have exhausted all other treatment options

Yet more good news from Amryt with Israel now added to the global reach for both Lojuxta and Myalept and Canada for Juxtapid. Pretty sure that Myalept is already available in Canada.

Also. it looks like some clinical news is expected over the coming weeks with a phase II trial for Lojuxta/Juxtapid in familial chylomicronemia syndrome (FCS) due to to produce data in Q1. Also due this quarter is feedback from the FDA on the clinical development pathway for Myalepta in Partial Lipodystrophy.

Amryt just getting on with the job in hand - good stuff.

Leisurely

I disagree, many oncology clinical trials are simply on hold at the moment due to Covid. The fact that 4D continue to recruit and have made real progress in part B of the PD-1 combination study is more than expected and worthy of comment IMO.

Excellent update and good to see progress despite COVID-19, particularly with the Keytruda combination study. Remembering that these are patients who have previously failed on PD-1 therapy, points worth highlighting (IMO)

1) Part B only opened for recruitment 6 or 7 months ago so despite covid recruitment is going well with 24 patients having since joined the trial
2) Fantastic that the part A responding patients continue on the trial after 18 months and have even seen further tumour reductions
3) Tumour reductions now seen in part B too
4) Following review of first cohort of part B patients, the trial is now being expanded to include 3 additional cancer types which can only be a positive sign

Good stuff.

For those who are interested in these things, the paper below reviews what's currently known about alpha-enolase (ENO1) and its potential role in cancer as a biomarker or therapeutic target. The relevance here of course is that citrullinated alpha-enolase is one of Modi1's targets and at least 2 of Scancell's Moditope research papers are cited.

'It is not clear if, like in RA, citrullination triggers ENO1 autoantibodies in cancer patients, although citrullinated ENO1 was reported to elicit anti-tumor CD4+ T responses in murine tumor xenografts and in ovarian cancer patients (Cook et al., 2018; Brentville et al., 2020). '

The conclusion - 'ENO1 overexpression in a broad range of human cancers and targetability make it an attractive cancer biomarker candidate and therapeutic target. Its localization in the tumor surface, key metabolic functions, and ability to promote tumor aggressive properties could be exploited for the development of novel comprehensive cancer care modalities'

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2020.614726/full

Dalester,

I admit to having had similar thoughts in the past regarding Moditope but very much disagree as far as SN14 is concerned.

Scancell have always been clear that this is a second generation Covid vaccine and as such it needs to bring significant improvements to the table . The one area that is emerging as a real issue now for 1st generation vaccines is they appear to be less effective against the new S. African and Brazilian strains. Phase 3 results published only this week from J&J and Novavax show a marked drop in efficacy against the S. African mutation and developers of existing vaccines are already working on additional booster shots to combat these new strains. Experts are now commenting that we possibly wouldn't have seen such high efficacy levels from the mRNA vaccines had they been in clinical trials now .

It seems that Scancell were faced with 2 choices, either press ahead with SN14 or select another candidate that will be more effective against these new strains and will potentially give a greater advantage over existing vaccines and allow SN15 to stand out from the crowd. Much better IMO to seize the opportunity to get it right now before they embark on expensive clinical development.

Fevertreeman,

How can the timing of this research be contrived in any way? Do you seriously think Andrew Newland has any control whatsoever over the timing independent research or of its publication in medical peer review journals ?

RNS dated 20th Jan
- research carried out last year by Western University, Ontario and submitted on 5th September 2020 to Springer Nature . Accepted in December 2020 having undergone peer review and published by Journal of Clinical & Experimental Metastasis on 7th January.

Today's RNS - research carried out in early 2020 but probably goes back much further, submitted in May 2020 to Clinical Chemistry (Journal for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry), accepted in November 2020 after peer review and published just 4 days ago on 25th January.

These RNSs are nothing to do with pumping the story, trying to influence the FDA or anything other than informing the market of the publication of independent, peer reviewed research in a timely manner.

moonparty,

When it comes to the utility of Parsortix versus antibody based CTC liquid biopsy systems, Parsortix has a major advantage in it's ability to capture both epithelial and mesenchymal cells. I'm not sure this is fully appreciated and will have a go at explaining, but please feel free to ignore if it's too much detail or I'm teaching you to suck eggs.

Antibody based systems like CellSearch work by seeking out and capturing cells displaying the specific marker EpCAM which is a molecule expressed on epithelial cells. However, cancer cells can undergo a process called EMT (epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition) whereby they lose their epithelial characteristics and become purely purely mesenchymal . So whilst the antibody based systems can pick up epithelial cells, as they undergo EMT they'll pick up less and less as they stop displaying the EpCAM marker and once they become purely mesenchymal cells they'll miss them altogether. A good example is in prostate cancer where CellSearch fails to pick up any CTCs at all in about a third of patients - it's believed that this is due to the fact that it can't detect cells undergoing EMT. Parsortix on the other hand doesn't differentiate and can pick up both epithelial and mesenchymal cells.

This is really important from a clinical point of view because EMT is associated with a particularly poor prognosis, with increased shedding of CTCs which are more likely to lead to metastasis . So you can see that if you wanted to carry out any downstream analysis, you'd definitely want to be buying a system that picks up mesenchymal cells, otherwise you're only seeing half the picture.