Aduro BioTech announced today that it has been awarded two cash grants totaling approximately $442,000 under the U.S. Government's Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project (QTDP) program.
“This funding will help support the development of our Listeria-based immunotherapy platform for cancer and infectious disease”
"This funding will help support the development of our Listeria-based immunotherapy platform for cancer and infectious disease," said Stephen Isaacs, Chairman and CEO of Aduro.
The QTDP was created by Congress as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March 2010. To qualify, Aduro had to show reasonable potential to produce a new therapy to prevent, detect, or treat chronic or acute disease and conditions; reduce long-term health costs; or significantly advance the goal of curing cancer within a 30-year period.
Aduro's live-attenuated Listeria vaccine platform has been evaluated in three Phase 1 clinical trials. Aduro has performed an initial analysis of long-term survival data resulting from one of these clinical studies, utilizing the Listeria strain CRS-207, which was engineered to express Mesothelin, an antigen commonly over-expressed in a range of solid tumors. The CRS-207 Phase 1 safety trial examined 17 patients with late-stage, mesothelin-expressing tumors: 7 pancreatic, 5 mesothelioma, 3 non-small cell lung, and 2 ovarian. Preliminary analysis of long-term survival data revealed that multiple patients survived significantly longer than historical controls. Aduro plans to release detailed results later this year.
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