Los Angeles, California – January 19, 2015. Vault Pharma announced that its clinical manufacturing collaboration with Protein Sciences Corporation has been initiated to produce its lead immunotherapeutic against lung cancer.
The collaboration is for the production of Vault Pharma’s lead cancer drug, VPI-101. VPI-101 is a cytokine-based immune stimulant that is delivered by a novel human protein nanoparticle, called a vault. Discovered at UCLA, vaults are being commercialized for a number of therapeutic indications by VPI. VPI-101 will be initially tested in patients with stage IV lung cancer and will ultimately be applied to melanoma and other metastatic cancers. The drug will be the cornerstone of multiple anti-cancer immune therapies being developed by the company that promise to be highly effective while reducing the long-term toxicity of today’s chemotherapeutics.
The manufacturing collaboration will focus on:
- Producing the human vault therapeutic, VPI-101, according to Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) to be used for toxicology studies,
- Scaling up manufacturing of VPI-101 sufficient to provide material for safety and efficacy clinical trials, and
- Producing clinical Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) VPI-101 for human clinical trials.
“VPI-101 is Vault Nano’s premiere drug in the immune oncology space, and this collaboration will enable VPI to leapfrog several years of manufacturing development and enter clinical trials by next year”, said Michael Laznicka, VPI Chairman and CEO. “Protein Sciences with their FDA approved protein manufacturing systems will be an ideal partner for our company.”
