Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Cancer Vaccines to Target the Tumor Microenvironment with Mai-Britt Zocca IO Biotech
Mai-Britt Zocca is the Founder, CEO, and President of IO Biotech, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Denmark. They are developing immune modeling cancer therapies based on their T-win technology. Using these cancer vaccines, pre-existing T-cells are being directed in patients to attack and eliminate solid tumors.
Mai-Britt explains, "Currently, we have a leading program that is in Phase 3. So, this is in first-line advanced melanoma. We have a breakthrough therapy designation granted by the FDA, based on the earlier data that we have seen in melanoma. Our targets also are able to be used in other cancer indications. We are not melanoma per se. We are already running trials in first-line solid tumors where we are including also lung, head, neck, and bladder cancer."
"What we do is vaccinate, as I mentioned before, and the vaccination process is a combination of first a booster program, where we give vaccination or injections several times. Then we have a maintenance phase after that. This is where we see that after these vaccinations, where we vaccinate against the tumor environment, we generate the T-cells that can react towards the immune suppressive mechanisms that we know are hindering the effect of the T-cells in these patients."
#IOBiotech #Melanoma #CancerVaccine #Immunotherapy #Cancer #ImmunoOncology