Achilles Therapeutics Receives Horizon 2020 Grant as Part of Neoantigen Consortium
May 06 2021 - 7:00AM
Achilles Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: ACHL), a clinical-stage
biopharmaceutical company developing precision T cell therapies to
treat solid tumors, today announced that it is a member of a
consortium that has been awarded a grant from Horizon 2020, an EU
Research and Innovation program. The consortium, which is led by
UCL and includes The Francis Crick Institute, the Weizmann
Institute of Science, and the Technical University of Denmark, in
addition to Achilles, will research the immunogenicity of tumor
neoantigens with the aim of developing a tool to predict neoantigen
immunogenicity.
“Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer
treatment, providing survival benefits to patients with
hard-to-treat tumors. There is an increasing call for personalized,
precision therapies to induce immune responses against
tumor-specific targets,” said Dr Sergio Quezada, Chief
Scientific Officer of Achilles. “This grant is a further
validation of the work being done at Achilles by our team of
world-class scientists. The contribution of our deep experience
with neoantigen prediction algorithms and our innovative platform
technology will allow the consortium to work toward identifying new
immunotherapeutic targets and effective anticancer therapies.”
Current technologies struggle to discriminate
immunogenic tumor neoantigens from the thousands of background
mutations in tumors at scale. The consortium will work together to
develop a high throughput neoantigen immunogenicity profiling
platform. The project, named DECOD-Ag, will be conducted by a team
of world-leading, interdisciplinary scientists from the consortium
with expertise in cancer immunotherapy, bioinformatics,
peptidomics, mass spectrometry, immune monitoring, clinical and
translational medicine.
This project has received €3 million ($3.6
million) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under the FETOPEN grant agreement
number 964998. Approximately €0.8 million ($1 million) will be
allocated to Achilles.
About Achilles Therapeutics
Achilles is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical
company developing precision T cell therapies targeting clonal
neoantigens: protein markers unique to the individual that are
expressed on the surface of every cancer cell. The Company has two
ongoing Phase I/IIa trials, the CHIRON trial in patients with
advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the THETIS trial in
patients with recurrent or metastatic melanoma. Achilles uses DNA
sequencing data from each patient, together with its proprietary
PELEUS™ bioinformatics platform, to identify clonal neoantigens
specific to that patient, and then develop precision T cell-based
product candidates specifically targeting those clonal
neoantigens.
About the Consortium
Members
UCLUCL is London's leading
multidisciplinary university, with more than 13,000 staff and
42,000 students from 150 different countries. Through a progressive
approach to teaching and research, our world leading academics,
curious students and outstanding staff continually pursue
excellence, break boundaries, and make an impact on real world
problems. UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top performing
organisations worldwide under the EU Framework Programmes for
research.
The Francis Crick InstituteThe
Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical research institute located
in London, UK. The Institute’s ambition is to discover the
fundamental biology underlying human health and diseases. The
Institute's work helps to understand why disease develops and to
find new ways to diagnose, prevent and treat a range of illnesses −
such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections and
neurodegenerative diseases. The Institute brings together
outstanding scientists from all disciplines, carrying out research
that will help improve the health and quality of people's lives,
and keep the UK at the forefront of medical innovation.
The Weizmann Institute of
ScienceThe Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel is one
of the world’s top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions
and offers masters’ and doctoral-level degrees across five
faculties, noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural
and exact sciences. Institute scientists are advancing research on
the human brain, artificial intelligence, computer science and
encryption, astrophysics and particle physics, and they are
tackling diseases such as cancer, and addressing climate change
through environmental, ocean and plant sciences, and more.
Technical University of
DenmarkDTU was founded in 1829 with the mission of
creating value for the benefit of society. DTU is an international
elite technical university where education, scientific advice, and
innovation rest on a solid foundation of world-class research. The
University is at the academic and multidisciplinary forefront of
the technical and the natural sciences - with new initiatives in a
number of demanding engineering disciplines such as life
science.
About Horizon 2020
Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument
implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe
2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global
competitiveness.
By coupling research and innovation, Horizon
2020 is helping to achieve this with its emphasis on excellent
science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges.
The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes
barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and
private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.
For further information please
visit: https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/.
Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release
contains express or implied forward-looking statements that are
based on our management's belief and assumptions and on information
currently available to our management. Although we believe that the
expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are
reasonable, these statements relate to future events or our future
operational or financial performance, and involve known and unknown
risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual
results, performance or achievements to be materially different
from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or
implied by these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking
statements in this press release represent our views as of the date
of this press release. We anticipate that subsequent events and
developments will cause our views to change. However, while we may
elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in
the future, we have no current intention of doing so except to the
extent required by applicable law. You should therefore not rely on
these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of
any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
Lee M. Stern – VP, IR & External
Communications+1 (332) 373-2634l.stern@achillestx.com
Consilium Strategic CommunicationsMary-Jane
Elliott, Sukaina Virji, Melissa Gardiner+44 (0) 203 709
5000achillestx@consilium-comms.com
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