CureVac, bruised from its COVID-19 vaccine woes, has struck another deal to bolster its cancer vaccine development capabilities, buying Frame Cancer Therapeutics for its ability to identify unique and shared neoantigens.
Having missed out on the COVID-19 vaccine windfall enjoyed by its mRNA rivals BioNTech and Moderna, CureVac has begun looking to a next-generation coronavirus candidate and to cancer vaccines to reignite its business. Last month, the German biotech struck a deal with myNEO to find specific antigens on the surface of tumors for the development of mRNA immunotherapies. Now, CureVac has inked an acquisition.
“The bioinformatics platform developed by Frame’s researchers has the potential to identify a broad panel of neoantigens that go beyond conventional neoantigens and could strongly increase the likelihood of developing highly effective cancer vaccines,” CureVac CEO Franz-Werner Haas said in a statement.
CureVac is buying Frame in a deal that values the Dutch startup at 32 million euros ($34 million). The mRNA specialist is paying Frame’s investors in its stock, starting with 50% upfront. The remaining 50% will be split across two “project milestone driven steps.”
In return for the outlay, CureVac is gaining control of a platform for identifying structural changes within the cancer genome. By identifying changes that create new open reading frames, the biotech is hoping to zero in on novel proteins that are absent from healthy tissues and are therefore recognized as foreign by the immune system.
The genetic changes that give rise to new open reading frames are specific to individual patients. Yet, if CureVac is right, the resulting neoantigenic proteins may be shared across many patients, enabling their use in cancer vaccines that are more broadly applicable.
Prior to the acquisition, Frame began applying its technology to the development of personalized cancer vaccines, securing clearance to start a phase 1 clinical trial of the neoantigen-based FRAME-001 in non-small cell lung cancer patients last year. CureVac plans to “refocus development of personalized cancer vaccines on an mRNA modality.”
The recent cancer vaccine deals expand CureVac’s capabilities in a long-standing area of interest. Going into 2017, CureVac was focused on the prostate cancer vaccine CV9104. The failure of a phase 2b trial torpedoed the candidate, but CureVac has retained an interest in the modality.