SBIR Phase I: Anti-Tumor Immune Redirectors (AIRs) for cancer treatment

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to develop a new class of cancer therapeutics that involves the re-directing of the body's pre-existing immune response obtained through previous childhood vaccination to target tumor cells for cancer eradication. Globally, cancer continues to be a top 5 leading cause of death resulting in a high unmet need for novel therapies and treatments. Immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs have emerged as a potent solution with demonstrated clinical benefits. However, such treatments are expensive and toxic, and up to 70% of cancer patients do not respond to such drugs due to the absence of an anti-tumor response. In contrast, the proposed strategy tailors the patient's tumor to become susceptible towards their own pre-existing childhood vaccine immunity. This approach will change treatment outcomes for many cancer patients previously un-targetable by current immuno-therapeutic drugs. This also circumvents the risky and costly R&D challenges in identifying and/or producing potent immune responses against cancer. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a platform technology to mobilize immunity generated from childhood vaccines and re-direct this activity towards tumors to eradicate cancer. This will be done via two development aims. The first aim will demonstrate the ability of the proposed technology to mobilize existing childhood vaccine responses from mice (with relevant human genetics) vaccinated with childhood vaccines (MMR, HepB, Chickpox vaccines). The second aim will be to test whether cancers with known metastasis challenges, such as ovarian and breast cancer, may be eradicated. Specifically, mice will be vaccinated with an appropriate childhood vaccine, then injected with relevant syngeneic tumors. Once the tumor is established, the proposed therapeutic will be injected to see if it can induce pre-existing immunity developed from the childhood vaccine and redirected towards the tumor. Therapeutic effect will be assessed based on the number of metastases and tumor weight/volume. If successful, this platform will provide both tumor specificity and broad applicability to a wide variety of cancers.