About This Program

This program aims to develop anti-GPC3 therapeutic vaccines for hepatocellular carcinoma immunotherapy.

Rationale for our program:

• Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common form of liver cancer and accounts for 90% of primary liver cancers. To date, the 5-year survival rate for patients with liver cancer remains low at approximately 10%. A novel and potent treatment strategy is urgently needed.
• Glypican-3 (GPC3) is a heparan sulfate proteoglycan expressing in 80% of HCC tissues but not in healthy liver or other normal tissues.
• In the first human studies of the GPC3 peptide vaccine, the safety of the GPC3 peptide vaccine has been confirmed and promising clinical results have been obtained.

(Shimizu, 2019)

GPC3

GPC3 is a heparan sulfate proteoglycan that binds to cell membranes by glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchoring. GPC3 regulates cell proliferation signals by binding to growth factors such as Wnt, fibroblast growth factor and insulin-like growth factor, and plays an important role in the proliferation and differentiation of embryonic cells. GPC3 is overexpressed in HCC tissues but not overexpressed in normal and benign tissues. GPC3 appears to promote tumor cell proliferation and invasion, therefore, GPC3 may be a potential target for HCC immunotherapy.

GPC3 in HCC

Here are some published data about GPC3 working as a potential target for HCC immunotherapy.

• GPC3 vaccine formulation (LC/GPC3+) exhibited significantly therapeutic antitumor effects in the C57/B6 murine HCC model.

(Wu, 2017)

Ongoing Clinical Trials

• Currently, only three anti-GPC3 therapeutic vaccines products are being evaluated in clinical trials. The cumulative preclinical data are emerging to support that GPC3 has unprecedented cancer specificity.

Table 1. Ongoing clinical trials of the GPC3 vaccine against HCC. (Shimizu, 2019)

• In an effort to optimally leverage GPC3-mediated immune response, our next generation of GPC3 targeting treatment attempts to explore combination therapy trials by involving other immunomodulatory agents.

Program Planning and Management

Creative Biolabs has extensive knowledge of end-to-end program development. For our Next-IOTM programs, we are committed to providing the program to the pre-IND stage within about 1.5 years.

Cooperation

Creative Biolabs is looking for potential partners (include but not limit to major pharma or biotech firms) to develop anti-GPC3 therapeutic vaccine program together. Our scientists are dedicated to bringing years of valuable experience to our partner and achieve a meaningful partnership together. For any partners interested in our Next-IO™ programs, Creative Biolabs welcomes collaboration.

Here are two ways for your choice, and please contact us for more details.

1) Collaborate with us and co-develop the programs from the discovery phase to IND enabling. Costs will be shared.

2) Become a licensed candidate for our programs.

With our quality control protocol and knowledge of global regulatory requirements, we can help our partners to advance their programs with more chances to succeed. Look forward to cooperating with you in the near future.

References

1. Shimizu, Y.; et al. Next-generation cancer immunotherapy targeting glypican-3. Frontiers in oncology. 2019, 9: 248.
2. Jiang, Z.; et al. Anti-GPC3-CAR T cells suppress the growth of tumor cells in patient-derived xenografts of hepatocellular carcinoma. Frontiers in immunolog. 2017: 690.
3. Wu, Q.; et al. A novel vaccine targeting glypican-3 as a treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma. Molecular Therapy. 2017, 25(10): 2299-2308.

For Research Use Only | Not For Clinical Use