Member Info for Burble

The reason the AZ vaccine is not being used to boost is because your body mounts antibodies against the adenovirus vector used to deliver the vaccine. In the case of AZ vaccine, the Y25 serotype is used for both the first and second shot. Anti-vector antibodies mounted by the body after both shots mean that further boosting of the patient has no significant improvement in immunity. Nucleotide based vectors do not have this problem, so you could technically be routinely vaccinated using an mRNA (or for that matter DNA) vaccine and not mount an immune response against the delivery vehicle (in this case a lipid nanoparticle).

One way in which AZ could have mitigated this was to use different adenoviruses for each vaccine. In the context of Covid vaccines, the Russian sputnik vaccine for instance is also an AAV based vaccine but uses two separate vectors (Serotype 26 and then Serotype 5) for the first and second shot respectively. Whilst the body mounts an imune response against the vector in both cases, as different serotypes are used. The anti-vector antibodies are prevented (or at least reduced) from hindering the bodies ability to mount an immune response against the Covid-19 spike protein.

‘The researchers used computer algorithms to sift through the SARS-COV-2 data to locate the proteins the variants shared.

They found two such areas. One is the notorious spike protein in all Covid-19 mutations; the other, a nucleocapsid protein that allows the virus to replicate quickly…

Pharmaceutical biologists at Monash were tasked with creating an mRNA vaccine capable of educating killer T cells to target those shared regions of SARS-COV-2 and eliminate infected cells.’

I wonder who else is targeting both the S- and N-proteins and educating high avidity T-cells and is already nearly a year into clinical trials?

I’m curious to see whether the two regions Covidity is targeting are the same as in this Monash study.

Another 4 added in the last three hours.

Sad to hear of your decision LL, but I understand your reasoning behind it and hope to see you back here sometime in the future!

Ruck

I've been thinking about this and I think Ivy's comments earlier regarding RNS titles has someway to go for it. I know in the past this board has spoken about the overall naming of SCLP being 'Scancell Holdings' rather than 'Scancell Pharma' or words to that effect.

What I would say is across many different companies, how an RNS title is worded can really generate energy within a share price but also can do the opposite. You see companies where RNSs scream 'this is the best thing ever' but when you start digging a little deeper and doing more research into a company, you realise they're saying one thing and behind the scenes things aren't as rosy as they could be.

LD and the team have generally been pretty factual about things and quite demure about findings. They're not shouting from the rooftops at every single announcement, but also what they're saying is v.factual and difficult to find fault in. Some investors like this, but others struggle with the lack of announcements or blowing their own trumpet at each and every development.

For me, I would rather the SP reacted on facts, figures and data, rather than pure sentiment. That way when it goes up, it goes up slow and steady, rather than having this pendulum effect you see on other shares.

IPad,

I wouldn't say Avacta is a direct competitor per se. Yes they are a biotech with some focus on oncology but I wouldn't see them as a competitor. Their affimer technology is a non-antibody scaffold based technology which has it's own pros and cons. The real overlap between the two companies comes with our antibody platforms, but I would generally say from a 'using a protein which binds to a target to treat cancer' aspect. That's pretty much where the similarities finish.

I think the original comment was more aimed at the fact Avacta's share price reacts to announcements, whereas Scancells doesn't.

C7 in response to your question ‘ what are your thoughts regarding the Approval of Modernas Covid vaccine in relation to what we are trying to achieve with Covidity??’

I have mixed feelings. I think the public are really becoming far less worried about covid than they should be. As such, I suspect vaccine take up for Moderna or any other omicron specific vaccine will be low.

I also believe yearly injections as covid mutates wont really be financially viable for big companies if the rates of uptake drops. Though globally the market will still be large.

This government will of course shout and dance if Covidity shows stellar results. They’ll praise British innovation, Innovate UK funding and use this as a poster child of the UK being a science superpower etc. so I suspect we would see especially within the UK some traction for Covidity going into further trials/widespread adoption of results are good.

Watching the tug-of-war between those is going to be interesting. Especially as Covidity isn’t an mRNA vaccine. Some questions that come to mind are:
- Will the public want a pan coronavirus vaccine after already having three/four shots already?
- Will the public want a DNA vaccine, given what we have seen with the scaremongers around mRNA vaccines?
- Would people be happier to have Covidity if it meant they didn’t have to have yearly jabs?
- Is there government appetite to buy it? (Even though it should be cheaper to make and store than mRNA vaccines).
- Will people want something from a UK biotech over and above a Moderna/Pfizer/big name pharma jab?

I have a hunch that if results are good and show good immunity against omicron and other variants, then success may hinge more on published media, promotion, branding and education to government and the wider public.

Likewise. Though selfish me thinks the longer this goes under the radar, the more I can have at these levels.

Great post Chester.

Stakis, if you want to read more about why trials of this type are slow to recruit at the beginning, take a read of the horror that was the TGN1412 trial at Northwick Park. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theralizumab)

This gives you a real life example of why a trial such as moditope which is testing a first in man and a first in class therapy has to proceed slowly for the sake of patient safety.

Like Chester said, it’ll soon ramp up and dare I say, probably will be the easiest to recruit to of all of our trials if these next three patients don’t show any safety concerns.

Also to note, the TGN1412 trial was in healthy participants. The playing field ethically changes slightly in patients with late stage cancer because their motivation for joining a trial especially one at an early stage is very different than for a healthy volunteers.

Playing devils advocate, no safety issues could mean no immune response.

As Bob says, it’s efficacy that needs to be demonstrated. So the next two months are going to be very exciting (and dare I say nerve wracking!)

‘All three patients have successfully received two doses; the injections were well tolerated with no safety concerns’

This is what we want to see and hopefully continue to see in cohort 2.

Will be exciting to see what happens over the next four months as H2 progresses.

Add to that it’s been two months since FPD on the ModiFY trial.

Mass exodus? Wonder what is triggering so many people to resign/not stand for re-election.

Something to add is that CRUK funded CTUs have to reapply every five years. So whilst there may be truth in this article in the sense that they are not funding as many CTUs as they have previously, they may just be at the point in the cycle where a strategic decision is made not to refund.

It's the same across many long-term funded programmes, it's not perpetual. These things get re-evaluated semi-regularly and the organisation makes a decision to shift funds elsewhere. Especially if they view other areas of the business as a priority over others. It wouldn't surprise me if they move back into University hands. So instead of being core funded by CRUK and badged as such, they're funded by the universities with some funding from elsewhere (whether that's CRUK or other charitable funding who knows).

Eight weeks have passed since Modi-1 FPD and 7 weeks since we had an update on the bispecific mAbs.

SCLP has never been massively news heavy, news comes when it does and leaks are pretty much non-existent, but the prolonged bouts of silence are ‘interesting’ to say the least.

Chelsea

Reading your 1617 post brought a smile to my face. I'm so pleased to hear your good news and long may those scans continue to be this way! I bet today was a nervous day but one that has ended in a perfect excuse to celebrate!

A few other things to bear in mind when it comes to pharma valuations.
- how big is the market size, is it set to grow in the future?
- is the therapeutic only targeting a niche group of patients, or is it a therapeutic which can be applied to multiple different patient types?
- If a niche group of patients, how do you stratify those patients who will respond - is that done through genetic testing or through standard routine pathology tests. If the former, then that limits you really to countries with more advanced healthcare settings. If the latter, you have a broader target market.
- is the technology a stop gap (i.e. a modality that is in it's vogue currently, but may be usurped soon by something better?)
- what are the costs of manufacturing, supply chains etc?
- what is the healthcare cost for administering?
- what is the cost to the patient both in physical money (i.e. how often do they have to go to a healthcare setting to be given the drug?) and in physical effects? Amazing drug, but poorly tolerated, would probably be used less, than a slightly worse drug but that is better tolerated by the patient.
- is the drug a single therapeutic or a platform?
- if the latter, how easy is it to adapt or screen new variations?
- what is the IP like? How broad is the patent? In what jurisdictions is this patent valid? How much time is left on the patent?
- what is the pre-clinical and clinical data like? Is it an incremental benefit or is it a real game changer?
- what are supply chains like? Will you struggle to sell the therapy because it uses a complex chemistry to make or a reagents that are produced by single entitles globally.

So many things that have to be taken into account when valuing pharmaceutical companies and the therapies that they are developing. Yes many people say 'it's all about the data' but it's a lot more nuanced than that when it comes to placing a monetary value on things. Data does help and it plays a massive part in answering some of the questions above. I wouldn't want to even hazard a guess as to what valuation you would put on the company currently.

Yup we’ve known that this was the delivery method since the original trial was published on the clinical trials website.

IIRK someone commented on this at the time.

WTP

On the clinical trials website, you can scroll down to the bottom of any trial and click see changes. Then you can either see them merged or side by side.

It allows you to compare the most recent, to any of the other change history.

Very useful when it’s updated because I tend to scroll to centres first to see if new places have opened.

Differences between August 12th and July 13th. With quick glance, a lot of spelling and technical terminology annotated. Updated to reflect the use of PharmaJet instead of electroporation.

Enrolment changed from 44 to 87 patients anticipated.

Sheffield teaching hospital NHS foundation trust added in addition to the four other recruiting sites but not yet recruiting. PI for this is Sarah Danson.