Vaccinex NRJust some thoughts on the licensing deal with Vaccinex.
Since Vaccinex is a private company, we don't know a great deal about them. There is virtually no information on the financial backers of the company, but we must assume they have adequate access to financial resources, as they have now been in 2 clinical trials and engaged biOasis with a $20 million dollar US deal.
For the moment, it seems that their clinical trial utilizing an Anti-SEMA4D antibody for the treatment of MS is on the backburner as they are pursuing the treatment of Huntington's with the same anti-body in a Phase II trial. My assumption is that the deal with biOasis will be to construct a fusion protein of the same anti-body with our peptide. I would imagine that they will be required to do the appropriate animal tox studies etc. Since Vaccinex would have plenty of animal data to compare the fusion and the naked anti-body with, they should be able to quickly determine if the peptide compromises the functionality of the anti-body or not.
I'm assuming that Vaccinex has probably determined that delivering more of the Anti-SEMA4D antibody into the CNS at a lower dosage will have a significant efficacious effect. To-date, they have probably been relying on neuroinflammation for penetration of the antibody into the CNS.
Now I don't know which disease (MS or Huntington's) will be the first to be treated with the fusion protein, but either one of these will give us the much needed human validation that biOasis requires. If all goes well, I would assume that Vaccinex may be in the clinic with our fusion protein within the next 1 to 1 1/2 years. I would further assume that we would probably realize most of the $20 million by the time that the first injections take place. We are not in the drug business, we are only the carrier. Commercial success for Vaccinex will take considerably longer, but our proof of concept will be cemented.
It's interesting that back in February, biOasis attended the Sachs Associates Neuroscience BioPartnering and Investment Forum in New York. If you recall, we participated in a panel discussion on Rare and Orphan Diseases hosted by Dr. Mark Day of Alexion. Another member on this panel was Dr. Maurice Zauderer, CEO, Vaccinex, Inc. as well as our own Dr. Reinhard Gabathuler. Guess attendance at these conferences might be worth more than we think.
Wonder how many other friends we made.