NWBT receives $490,000 in two grants under QTDP program

Northwest Biotherapeutics (OTC Bulletin Board: NWBO) today announced that the company has received approximately $490,000 in two grants under the Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Grants Program.  The maximum award was received for both grants.  

The Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Grants Program was included in the healthcare reform legislation enacted last March, and established a one-time pool of $1 billion for grants to small biotech companies developing novel therapeutics which show potential to (a) result in new therapies that either treat areas of unmet medical need, or prevent, detect, or treat chronic or acute diseases and conditions, (b) reduce long-term health care costs in the United States, or (c) significantly advance the goal of curing cancer within the 30-year period beginning on May 21, 2010.  

NWBT is developing DCVax® personalized immune therapies for treatment of most cancers: a whole new category of cancer treatments (without toxicity).  As previously reported, patients treated with DCVax® have shown striking extensions of survival in brain cancer and late stage prostate cancer in clinical trials to date.  In addition, further long-term survival data continues to accumulate.  As such, NWBT's DCVax® technology is a strong fit with the program goals relating to novel therapeutics in the Therapeutic Discovery Grants Program.  

The Therapeutic Discovery Grants were also targeted to small companies with new biotechnologies that have the greatest potential to  (a) create and sustain (directly or indirectly) high quality, high-paying jobs in the United States, and (b) advance United States competitiveness in the fields of life, biological, and medical sciences.

NWBT has pioneered a unique batch manufacturing process (making several years of treatments in a single batch) which is revolutionizing the economics of personalized products, such as DCVax®, and enabling them to be produced in the US and priced below the level of most recent cancer drugs.  NWBT has also designed and developed novel automation of key manufacturing processes for these personalized products, which greatly increases production efficiencies and quantities, while significantly reducing both direct and indirect costs.   As such, NWBT's batch manufacturing and automation technologies are a strong fit for the program goals relating to US jobs, manufacturing and competitiveness in the Therapeutics Discovery Grants Program.

The Therapeutic Discovery Project grant applications were first reviewed by the US Treasury Department, and then were independently reviewed and evaluated by the Department of Health and Human Services in regard to their novelty, significance and fit with the grant program's goals.