First Head & Neck Cancer Patient Enrolled in the UK in a Phase I Trial with TG4050 (myvac® Platform), Transgene’s Innovative Individualized Immunotherapy

First Head & Neck Cancer Patient Enrolled in the UK
in a Phase I Trial with TG4050 (myvac® Platform),
Transgene’s Innovative Individualized Immunotherapy

Strasbourg, France, June 28, 2021, 07:00 am CET – Transgene (Euronext Paris: TNG), a biotech company that designs and develops virus-based immunotherapeutics against cancer, today announces that the first UK patient has been enrolled in the Phase I clinical trial of TG4050, Transgene’s innovative individualized cancer immunotherapy, currently being evaluated in HPV-negative head and neck cancer patients. TG4050 is a therapeutic vaccine based on Transgene’s myvac® technology platform, which leverages Transgene’s proprietary technologies and cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to customize the treatment for each patient.

The innovative approach behind TG4050 combines Transgene’s expertise in virus-based immunotherapies, NEC’s longstanding AI technologies and the commitment of prestigious cancer care centers in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States.

THE FIRST UK PATIENT OF THE TRIAL EVALUATING THIS INDIVIDUALIZED CANCER IMMUNOTHERAPY HAS BEEN INCLUDED IN LIVERPOOL, UK, in a trial enrolling patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

The trial is led by the coordinating investigator Professor Christian Ottensmeier, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and Professor of Immuno-Oncology at the University of Liverpool. In the UK, the trial is being conducted in Liverpool and in Southampton (at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust, at Liverpool University Hospitals and at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust / University of Southampton).

Professor Christian Ottensmeier, M.D., Ph.D., coordinating investigator of the study, added: “We are pioneering the personalized cancer vaccine field. If successful, this technique could be a potentially game-changing development in the treatment of advanced head and neck cancers. We have spent the last 15 years working on the science behind this immunotherapy so it is very gratifying to be beginning clinical trials with the first patient being enrolled in the UK. Head and neck cancers are particularly complex to treat if they spread and cannot then be completely removed surgically. Personalized cancer vaccines are an extremely exciting development and, if successful, the same technique could also be applied to treat other forms of cancer.”

Dr. Maud Brandely, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Transgene, added: “We are delighted to start the clinical trial with our individualized myvac® immunotherapy in the UK. We have been collaborating for several years with Professor Ottensmeier on this novel therapy to better target tumor cells and we are excited to see that our world-leading innovations are now reaching patients in different countries in Europe and in the USA. We are convinced that, together with leading scientists and clinicians, we will be able to demonstrate the value of our individualized approach against head and neck cancer and leverage these future results to target other solid tumors.”

TG4050 IS A CANCER VACCINE FULLY CUSTOMIZED FOR EACH PATIENT

COMBINing BEST-IN-CLASS THERAPEUTIC VACCINE RESEARCH AND CUTTING-EDGE AI TECHNOLOGY

Transgene’s highly innovative technology platform, myvac®, enables the generation of a virus-based immunotherapy, which encodes patient-specific cancer cell mutations (neoantigens) identified and selected by NEC’s Neoantigen Prediction System (NPS), an advanced AI technology approach. TG4050 has been designed to target up to 30 patient-specific neoantigens.

With more than 20 years of AI expertise, NEC’s NPS has been trained using both proprietary and public immune databases. Preclinical work with the myvac® technology platform has demonstrated that NEC’s AI-based tumor mutanome profiling tool accurately selects and prioritizes the most immunogenic neoantigens from each unique tumor[1].

Transgene is using its expertise in viral genome engineering to incorporate the selected neoantigens into the DNA of the myvac®-MVA viral vector.

The company has also set up a unique in-house Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) unit dedicated to the manufacturing of the individualized batches of TG4050 that are needed for the ongoing Phase I clinical studies with this novel therapeutic vaccine.

FIRST DATA FROM TWO ONGOING CLINICAL TRIALS

EXPECTED IN 4Q 2021

In a first Phase I trial, TG4050 is being administered to patients with HPV-negative head and neck cancer (NCT04183166). A personalized treatment is created for each patient after they complete surgery and while they receive an adjuvant therapy. Half of the participants receive their vaccine immediately after they complete their adjuvant treatment. The other half will be given TG4050 as an additional treatment at the time of recurrence of the disease. This randomized study is evaluating the treatment benefits of TG4050 in patients who have a high risk of relapse. Up to 30 patients will receive TG4050 in France, in the UK and in the USA.

The principal investigator of the trial is Prof. Christian Ottensmeier, M.D., Ph.D., Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and Professor of Immuno-Oncology at the University of Liverpool. In France, the clinical trial is being conducted at the IUCT-Oncopole, Toulouse, by Prof. Jean-Pierre Delord ,M.D., Ph.D.  and at Institut Curie, Paris, by Prof. Christophe Le Tourneau, M.D., Ph.D., Head of the Department of Drug Development and Innovation (D3i). In the USA, the trial is being led by Dr. Yujie Zhao, M.D., Ph.D., at the Mayo Clinic.

In parallel, a second Phase I clinical trial of TG4050 is enrolling patients with ovarian cancer (NCT03839524). This second trial is including patients after surgery and first-line chemotherapy. Dr. Matthew Block, M.D., Ph.D., Consultant Medical Oncology, Consultant Immunology and Associate Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic (USA) is the principal investigator of the trial; in France, the trial is being conducted by Prof. Christophe Le Tourneau at Institut Curie and by Dr. Alexandra Martinez, M.D., Associate Head of Surgical Department, at Toulouse-Oncopole.

The first data from the two trials evaluating TG4050 are expected in 4Q 2021.

[1] Mallone et al., “Performance of neoantigen prediction for the design of TG4050, a patient specific neoantigen cancer vaccine”, AACR, June 2020