The study shows that Tatum's treatment “unmasked” cancer cells and destroyed tumors in mice.
Sherbrooke, Que.-based healthcare startup Tatum Bioscience has shown promising results from its immunotherapies, which it says can scale more reliably than other cancer vaccines.
“Replicating these results in patients is our goal as we move toward clinical development.”
Kevin Neal, Tatum Bioscience
In an article published in Journal of Cancer Immunotherapy This week, results from studies in mice with cancer showed that Tatum's immunotherapy, administered with a vaccine-like agent, “unmasked” cancer cells that had previously been hidden from the immune system. This allowed the body to organize a protective reaction aimed at destroying tumors.
“The immune system can be compared to an orchestra: for a powerful antitumor response, each instrument—or cellular component—must play its role at the right moment,” Tatum CEO and co-founder Jean-François Milhaud said in a statement. “This is what our drug candidate achieves.”
Treatment with Tatum's drug eliminated cancerous tumors in most mice. These potentially “cured” mice were kept under observation to see if the cancer returned. The researchers injected the mice with another round of cancer cells, but none developed tumors, suggesting they may have acquired immune protection against a specific type of cancer.
Dr. Gerald Baptiste, Tatum's medical consultant and director of Montreal's Segal Cancer Center at the Jewish General Hospital, called the results a “big step forward” because the treatment activates both innate and adaptive immune responses. This means it could potentially protect against future development of a specific cancer by acting as a vaccine.
Founded in 2019 by researchers at the University of Sherbrooke, Tatum develops immunotherapies to treat cancer. These types of medications are designed to activate the body's immune system to destroy cancerous tumors. This is different from treatments such as chemotherapy, which target problem cells and destroy them but can also kill healthy ones.
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Scientists have been trying to develop a reliable and scalable cancer vaccine for many years. renewed meinterest following the release of the COVID-19 vaccine. Last month, researchers from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center published the first results of the study. powerful immune response against colorectal and pancreatic cancer in human patients.
In his paper, Tatum argues that personalized cancer vaccines are time-consuming, expensive and difficult to scale. Unlike traditional types of vaccines, Tatum uses nanofilaments to stimulate an immune response against harmful factors in the body. Nanofilaments are molecular assemblies of proteins that bind to cancer cells. Tatum creates them using viruses that replicate inside bacteria, which it believes is a scalable approach. In this approach, the tumor itself acts as a source of antigens to generate an immune response, making it flexible across different types of cancer.
“Replicating these results in patients is our goal as we move toward clinical development,” Tatum co-founder and chief scientific officer Kevin Neal said in a statement. Milhaud said he hopes to conduct clinical trials within two years.
The startup says it needs more funding to test its vaccine platform in humans. Tatum told Les Affaires last year that it it was planned to raise $45 million.. The company told BetaKit that it has raised a total of $5.8 million in funding so far, including from Quebec investors such as BoxOne Ventures, Sherbrooke Innopole and ACET Capital. It's happening in the background difficult financial situation for early-stage Canadian startups, especially in the life sciences.
Image provided Unsplash. Photo by Yulia Koblitz.
