BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - Immuno-Designed Molecules SA is to coordinate a European research project aimed at optimizing a therapeutic vaccine against cancer.

The project is being funded by the European Union for €2 million.

Five other organizations are involved in the project: the Istituto Superiore di Sanita and Etna Biotech in Italy, the Children's Cancer Research Institute in Austria, the University of Regensburg in Germany and the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute in Australia.

The three-year project will be devoted entirely to vaccines based on dendritic cells and will cover not only the optimization of the product but also the design of an industrial-scale manufacturing process and the preparation of the Phase I trial protocol for a vaccine in prostate cancer.

Paris-based IDM is developing a number of cell therapies and therapeutic vaccines for cancer. It is particularly specialized in products that combine dendritophages (monocyte-derived dendritic cells taken from the patient) with specific antigens. It has six products in clinical development, the most advanced of which is a cell therapy that has been in Phase III trials for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer since early 2001.

The company is involved in another European research program, a breast cancer immunotherapy project, which is being coordinated by the Institute of Biotechnology in Jülich (Germany) and entails the development of a vaccine that associates dendritic cells with the Muc-1 antigen. The project, which is receiving EU funding of €1.85 million, was launched in September 2002 and is due to run for three years.