Champions Oncology Files Patents for Use of PDX Platform in Immune-Oncology

HACKENSACK, N.J., Aug. 17, 2015

Dr. David Sidransky, the founder and Chairman of Champions Oncology commented, "Drug development ‎in the immune-oncology space is fundamentally changing our approach to cancer treatment. These patents represent potentially invaluable tools for developing and personalizing immune therapy based on cutting edge sequence analysis, bioinformatics and our unique in vivo models. "

Joel Ackerman, Chief Executive Officer of Champions Oncology stated, "Developing intellectual property related to our Champions TumorGraft® platform has been an important component of strategy.  The filing of these patents is an important milestone in leveraging our research and development investment to expand our platform and create proprietary tools for use by our pharmaceutical partners.  We continue to look for additional revenue streams to supplement our fee-for-service business and we believe these patents will help us capture more of the value we create for our customers in the future."

The first patent filing covers the methodology used by the Company to create a mouse model, containing a humanized immune system and a human tumor xenograft, which is capable of testing the efficacy of immune-oncology agents, both as single agents and in combination with anti-neoplastic drugs.  The second patent filing relates to the detection of neoantigens and their role in the development of anti-cancer vaccines.

Keren Pez, Chief Scientific Officer, explained, "In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in cancer research that focuses on exploring the power of the human immune system to attack tumors. However, it's challenging to test immune-oncology agents in traditional animal models due to the major differences between human and murine immune systems.  The Champions ImmunoGraft™ platform has the unique ability of mimicking a human adaptive immune response in the mice, which allows us to specifically evaluate a variety of cancer therapeutics that modulate human immunity.    

"Therapeutic vaccines that trigger the immune system to mount a response against a growing tumor are another area of intense interest.  The development of an effective vaccine remains challenging but has an outstanding curative potential. Tumors harbor mutations in DNA that result in the translation of aberrant proteins.  While these proteins have the potential to provoke an immune response that destructs early-stage cancer development, often the immune response becomes insufficient.  Vaccines can trigger it by proactively challenging the system with these specific mutated peptides. Nevertheless, developing anti-cancer vaccines that effectively inhibit tumor growth has been complicated, partially due to challenges in finding the critical mutations, among others difficulties. With the more recent advances in genome sequencing, it's now possible to identify tumor-specific antigens, or neoantigens, that naturally develop as an individual's tumor grows and mutates," she continued.

Ackerman added, "We believe that these innovative research tools represent a tremendous step forward in the utilization of personalized cancer therapy.  The filings of these patent applications are significant additions to our intellectual property portfolio and work to drive our long-term shareholder value."