Public Funding for Kargenera Limited

We are developing a new product to treat cancers of high unmet need. The goal is to make an RNA therapeutic cancer vaccine that targets a part of the immune system called natural killer cells. Natural killer cells have been demonstrated to have anti-cancer properties, and our vaccine approach will boost the natural killer cell response to cancers expressing a specific protein that we have identified. Importantly this protein is present in higher than normal quantities in a number of different cancers including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), breast cancer, bladder cancer, endometrial cancer, mesothelioma, paediatric leukaemia and, head and neck cancer. Whilst we consider that we have an opportunity to treat many different cancers, we are focusing on HCC. This is because not only is it an area of high unmet need, but currently the average survival in individuals undergoing treatment for HCC is only two years. To date we have tested an RNA vaccine approach to HCC, but we do not have the correct model to recapitulate treatment in the clinic. This is a barrier which we need to overcome in order for us to demonstrate the full benefit of our RNA vaccine therapeutic, in order to gain regulatory approval before we progress to clinical studies. The goal of this project is therefore to establish a model to fully test our novel RNA vaccine approach to HCC using a stepwise approach of model development, model testing and then testing our therapeutic alone and with a currently used therapy for HCC. If the project is successful it will represent a large step in the direction towards a clinical trial of a new type vaccine therapy for HCC.