Tocagen, Inc. is a clinical-stage, cancer-selective gene therapy company, focused on developing product candidates designed to activate a patient's immune system against their own cancer from within. The firm is initially focused on treatments for patients with advanced cancer for whom no adequate treatment currently exists. Tocagen believes that selective cancer immunotherapies represent an important opportunity for treating cancers because such therapeutics selectively activate the immune system against the tumor both locally and systemically. Potential future indications may include metastatic cancers including melanoma and colorectal cancer. The Company uses a simple retrovirus as a proprietary platform to develop a novel set of gene transfer products, which deliver therapeutic genes to cancer cells. Its cancer-selective gene therapy platform is built on retroviral replicating vectors (RRVs), which are designed to deliver therapeutic genes into the DNA of cancer cells. The company's lead product candidate is Toca 511 & Toca FC that is in Phase 2 portion of a randomized, controlled Phase 2/3 clinical trial for patients with recurrent high grade glioma (HGG). It is also developing Toca 511 & Toca FC in a Phase 1b clinical trial for metastatic cancers, including colorectal, pancreatic, breast, lung, melanoma, and renal. In addition, the company is developing other RRVs to deliver genes to cancer cells against validated immunotherapy targets, such as the checkpoint protein PD-L1.
