[Pangyo Bio] Theragen Bio Patented AI-based Cancer Vaccine Design Program

    LOS ANGELES, CA, December 15, 2022 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Theragen Bio has completed patent registration for "device for predicting immunogenicity of synthetic long peptides, method for predicting immunogenicity and computer program," which is from its AI-based cancer vaccine development platform, DEEPOMICS® NEO.

The patent registered thls time is the method to effectively measure the immunogenicity of Synthetic Long Peptide (SLP) in neoantigen vaccines and designs a vaccine that can maximize the immunogenicity of neoantigen candidates selected through genome analysis and experiments.

DEEPOMICS® NEO quantifies the immunogenicity of the SLP presented by the injection in the body of the patient's target cells and find •HLA binding ability of the neoantigen •T cell recognition level •cleavage prediction information •peptide sequence information, etc. It is a program that finds the optimal location of a mutation in the SLP sequence with quantification of the data. The company expects it to be a groundbreaking technology essential for the development of personalized neoantigen vaccines in the future.

Neoantigen candidate screening programs developed so far only provided the function of predicting the neoantigen that induces the patient's immune response among the mutations found by genome analysis, and there has been no program that predicts the position of the mutation that maximizes the immunogenicity of the vaccine. However, therapeutic cancer vaccines contain neoantigen candidate mutations in the form of long peptide sequences, and the immune response varies greatly depending on the location of the mutation in the SLP sequence, so the need for a program that predicts the location of the mutation has been continuously emerging.

In addition, in order to activate an immune response to mutations of cancer cells, T cells must be stimulated by antigen presenting cells (APCs) and dendritic cells, not cancer cells. The development of an algorithm that predicts the binding between neoantigens and major histocompatibility complex (MHC), MHC class I (MHC I), and class Ⅱ (MHC Ⅱ) has led to various clinical applications of personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines. It plays an important role in expanding and applying the clinical result to various types of carcinoma.

"The development of a vaccine design algorithm that maximizes neoantigen immunogenicity will be an important focus of future neoantigen vaccine research. The cancer vaccine designed with thls patent showed superior immune response induction and treatment effects in preclinical models compared to competitors, and is an advanced technology that can be applied to all vaccine designs." said Baek Soon-myeong, CTO of Theragen Bio. He added, "We will achieve the goal of developing a cure for incurable cancer and a customized medicine through steady research."

Theragen Bio is researching and developing a therapeutic neoantigen cancer vaccine that helps activate immune cells by selectively stimulating T cells that recognize tumor mutations. In the field of neoantigen cancer vaccine, personalized treatment is possible in that the neoantigens can be selected based on mutation information of different tumors for each individual, so it is drawing attention in the development of cancer treatments.

Meanwhile, the company has completed registration of patents for a total of 6 cancer vaccine platforms, including •2 patents for DEEPOMICS® MARKER and •4 patents for DEEPOMICS® NEO. In the future, the company plans to continue R&D on personalized treatment targets and new drug development for each patient to develop genome-based innovative solutions with DEEPOMICS®, a genome big data platform.

Pangyo News Room

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