Breast Cancer Vaccine Candidate Patent Broadened

Anixa Biosciences, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had issued a Notice of Allowance broadening the protection of Anixa's novel breast cancer vaccine technology. 

This technology was invented by the late Dr. Vincent Tuohy and developed at Cleveland Clinic, and Anixa is the exclusive worldwide licensee. 

Anixa's breast cancer vaccine candidate, currently in Phase 1 clinical trials, takes advantage of endogenously produced proteins that have a function at certain times in life but then become "retired" and disappear from the body. 

One such protein is a breast-specific lactation protein, α-lactalbumin, which is no longer found post-lactation in normal, aging tissues but is present in most triple-negative breast cancers. 

Activating the immune system against this "retired" protein provides preemptive immune protection against emerging breast tumors that express α-lactalbumin. 

The vaccine candidate also contains an adjuvant that activates an innate immune response, which allows the immune system to mount a response against emerging tumors to prevent them from growing. 

Dr. Amit Kumar, Chairman and CEO of Anixa, commented in a press release on February 27, 2023, "This breast cancer vaccine has the potential to prevent Triple Negative Breast Cancer, the deadliest form of breast cancer, and perhaps other forms of breast cancer that express alpha-lactalbumin."

"In addition, with our partners at Cleveland Clinic, we .... plan to present data from the trial at the annual American Association for Cancer Research meeting in April (2023)."

One in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at some point in their lives. Approximately 10-15% of those diagnoses are Triple-Negative Breast Cancer.