Vaccinogen Announces Filing of Oncavert® Patent Application

BALTIMORE, June 16, 2016

The Oncavert^® patent application relates to methods for characterizing antigenic determinants, which broadly define adenocarcinomas with the guidance of human monoclonal antibodies (HuMabs) reactive to such epitopes. One aspect involves characterization of the critical antigenic determinants (epitopes) with a high degree of inter- and intra-tumor incidence across a broad range of adenocarcinomas. The patent application also relates to the physical recapitulation of the epitopes, generating a cohort of specific peptides, which may be useful for vaccinating humans against a wide range of adenocarcinomas using a limited number of homogeneous tumor antigens.  Vaccinogen currently has a cohort of antibodies demonstrating known specific cross reactivity with colon tumors and more broadly with a representative variety of adenocarcinomas. The Oncavert^® research plan is to expand the cohort by developing more HuMabs from future OncoVAX^® treated patients and skin testing the epitopes and or the peptides in other OncoVAX^® immunized patients.

Michael G. Hanna Jr., Ph.D., Vaccinogen's Founder, Director, Chairman Emeritus, and discoverer of OncoVAX^® and co-discoverer of Oncavert^®, stated, "No current tools exist in our cancer treatment armamentarium that can match the specificity of long-term immune surveillance. By way of comparison, if patients were to present with smallpox today, modern medicine can provide little more than supportive care. However, by appropriately training the immune system to prevent infection, we have eradicated the problem from our species. By focusing on prevention, rather than treating advanced disease, smallpox has been completely eliminated as well as similar infectious agents such as pox, polio, measles, guinea worm disease among others.  With Oncavert^®, we believe cancer will soon follow."

With Oncavert^®, Vaccinogen's migration into prevention of cancer is based on its decades-long position that patient-specific immunotherapy and targeting cancer specific antigens prior to widespread metastasis is essential.  Vaccinogen is now declaring that timing is appropriate to pursue cancer immuno-prevention. Vaccinogen's patient specific active immunotherapy, OncoVAX^®, causes an agnostic immune system to create and affect an immediate clinical benefit and establish long-term immune surveillance to prevent cancer recurrence.  In addition, certain unique, broadly reactive antibodies are created.

Vaccinogen's view has been that adenocarcinomas are multi-clonal with inter- as well as intra-genomic heterogeneity. Therefore, a single protein product targeted approach to treatment is extremely problematic. However, for early intervention, the specific antibody homogeneity uncovered during OncoVAX^® treatments has become the basis for Oncavert^®, which Vaccinogen believes may provide a pathway for developing a generic adenocarcinoma prevention vaccine.

Dr. Hanna continued, "Evaluating and characterizing the humoral and cell-based responses within its previous and upcoming clinical trials, Vaccinogen intends to identify the molecular determinants most suitable to accomplish treatment of occult disease which leads to metastasis and the resources to develop Oncavert^® as a prophylactic adenocarcinoma vaccine."

Andrew L. Tussing, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Vaccinogen, concluded, "We at Vaccinogen are grateful to Oncavert^®'s co-inventors, Drs. Michael Hanna and Jason Howard for their outstanding breakthrough work.  We find ourselves in an exciting time in cancer immunotherapeutic research.  This renaissance is occurring in parallel with advancements in technology designed to identify and exploit these pathways for clinical gain. As a field, we must grasp this opportunity and broaden our focus from curing cancer to preventing cancer."