Date: Jul 16, 2013 Author: Dr. Kenneth Carter Source: Chesapeake Crescent Initiative (
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Scientists around the world continue to search for better treatments for cancer. Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine have been working for the past decade on an innovative approach to immunotherapy based on artificial cells that direct the immune system to attack tumor cells. The first product based on this technology that should be ready for testing in humans by 2014.
NextImmune, Inc. has an exclusive worldwide license to this technology, called Artificial Immunity or AIM™. Our first therapeutic, AIM101™, is a novel breakthrough product for the treatment of several types of cancer. We are pleased to have AIM101™ included in the CCI Regional Innovation Portal.
The AIM™ platform is the subject of an extensive intellectual property portfolio that includes multiple patents worldwide, including seven issued US patents, plus several US and foreign filings. The technology will lead to a series of innovative off-the-shelf products for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.
Central to the AIM technology are artificial Antigen Presenting Cells (aAPC) that have the potential to bypass many of the bottlenecks found in established and emerging immunotherapies. These artificial cells can be precisely engineered and reproducibly manufactured as off-the-shelf injectable medicines, representing a pharmaceutically controlled "cellular" treatment.
Unlike existing treatments, which often depend on the healthiness of the patient's immune cells, treatments using these artificial cells can be designed to elicit broad as well as highly targeted immune responses, and are not subject to suppression by tumors.
Successful administration of our first product will represent a quantum leap in cellular immunotherapy in terms of reduced cost, ease of administration, and -- most likely -- efficacy. Several of the advantages the AIM™ approach have been validated in published research articles using pre-clinical models, or in studies involving direct ex-vivo stimulation of patient immune cells.
We believe there is a broad range of product development opportunities that will result from the AIM™ technology. NexImmune is focused on those opportunities that will provide the greatest potential for clinical benefit. These include not only the development of aAPC for treatment of cancer but also further advancement of the technology through proof-of-principle studies in infectious diseases, transplants, autoimmune diseases, and biodefense applications.
