Xconomy: Cancer Vaccines Back in Vogue as VCs Put $102M Into Gritstone Oncology
Summary
Cancer Vaccines Back in Vogue as VCs Put $102M Into Gritstone Oncology (Page 2 of 2) show a benefit here than in, say, melanoma, where combinations of drugs like ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab are already leading to much better results.Gritstone will spend a lot of cash accumulating one lung cancer tumor sample after another, trying to uncover which ones Allen calls “magical.” “There’s some work to be done,” he says.Gritstone aims to biopsy a patient’s tumor, sequence it, find the relevant neo-antigens, and then make a vaccine loaded up with those key neo-antigens.As of yet there is no direct evidence that creating a vaccine with neo-antigens helps cancer patients—just links that, as even Allen acknowledges, could be entirely “circumstantial.” All of this is why the company is called Gritstone.In addition to Chan and Rizvi, its other scientific founders are Jean-Charles Soria of the Institut Gustave Roussy in Paris, Graham Lord of King’s College London, and Mark Cobbold of Massachusetts General Hospital.