Immusol Announces an Exclusive Worldwide License Agreement with Baylor College of Medicine for a Novel Cancer Therapy
2/1/2006 San Diego, CA press release Genetic Engineering News (www.genengnews.com) Immusol announced today that it has entered into a license agreement with Baylor College of Medicine for the exclusive, worldwide rights to a novel oncolytic viral therapy using herpes simplex viruses. Baylor researchers have developed extensive expertise in the field of oncolytic virotherapies against a wide variety of solid tumors. The in-licensed therapy represents Baylor's most advanced virotherapy to date and has shown safety and strong efficacy in a number of preclinical animal tumor models. Oncolytic viruses are human viruses that infect and replicate in cancer cells, destroying these harmful cells and leaving normal cells largely unaffected as a result of specific viral genetic modifications. Principal anti-tumor mechanism used by these viruses is a direct cytopathic effect, produced as the virus propagates and spreads from initially infected tumor cells to surrounding tumor cells, achieving a progressively larger volume of distribution and enhanced tumor cell killing. "The recent approval of the first oncolytic viral therapy for head and neck cancer by the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration, together with the increasing number of clinical trials for oncolytic viral therapies worldwide signal the coming of age of oncolytic viral therapy as a new and important modality for cancer treatment," said Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal, Immusol's Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Research. "We believe that the Baylor oncolytic viral therapy has significant advantages over many other oncolytic viruses, including higher potency and efficacy in metastatic tumors. We are excited to [...]