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Therapeutic Vaccines
Therapeutic vaccines are an innovative approach to cancer immunotherapy that aim to instruct the patients’ immune system on what cancer cells 'look like,' so that the immune system can recognize and eliminate tumors. Ideally, therapeutic cancer vaccines not only induce tumor regression and eradicate minimal residual disease, but also establish anti-tumor memory to protect patients on a longer-term basis.
Therapeutic cancer vaccines adequately stimulate our defence system to effectively control tumors.
We specialize in identifying tumor-specific antigens that may not be hardcoded in our DNA, but instead emerge during gene transcription and translation into protein.
To gain new insights and develop more effective therapies it is absolutely vital to map the anticancer immune response in patients in minute detail.
We aim to induce specific anti-tumor immunity in a controlled way, using molecularly defined adjuvants and formulations to elicit the right type of tumor-specific T cell immune reaction.
We focus in developing therapeutic vaccines- including manufacturing process development and GMP implementation-making the production platforms available to third parties.
Accelerate the development of therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of cancer.
The Therapeutic Vaccines Workstream taps into the great clinical promise of this form of immunotherapy to stimulate tumor immunity. Within the Oncode Accelerator Program, the Workstream provides Demonstrator Project partners with a unified pipeline where the latest innovations and high-quality technologies from different partners and top-notch cancer institutes are bundled into an open platform for vaccine development, production and clinical testing.
Access innovative infrastructure for developing
therapeutic vaccines from concept to clinic.
Key to the success of the Oncode Accelerator program is the selection and execution of high-quality Demonstrator Projects which aim to both validate the Oncode Accelerator infrastructure while simultaneously addressing unmet medical needs. We invite international researchers, biotech and pharma companies to apply for a Demonstrator Project and partner with us for preclinical development of promising assets.
By combining the key capabilities of our Workstreams with the innovations from our Platforms (Patient Cohorts, Organoids and Artificial Intelligence) we create a synergistic effect resulting in better therapies, tailored to individual patients or patient subgroups.
Click on the arrows below to understand how Oncode Accelerator supports cancer researchers and drug developers to develop therapeutic cancer vaccines all the way from early R&D to de-risked clinical candidates through Demonstrator Projects.
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Are you looking to...
Find and Validate Targets
- Scrutinize the canonical and non-canonical proteome for tumor-specific epitopes
- Identify the best tumor antigens to react against
- Find new leads to improve the outcome of therapeutic vaccines in a target population
- Validate the immunogenicity of newly identified tumor (neo)epitopes
Understand Immune Responses
- Perform complex clinical trial immune monitoring, using state-of-the-art innovative approaches
- Characterize the T cell response in vitro
- Determine the systemic and local impact of vaccines on specific immune cells
- Perform immune profiling of the microenvironment to determine what proportion of a target group is susceptible to therapeutic vaccines
- Determine possible hurdles to therapeutic vaccine efficacy for which co-medication can be provided
Develop the Next Generation of Therapeutic Vaccines
- Develop flexible vaccine platforms/adjuvants and their combinations for appropriate immune stimulation
- Select a vaccine delivery platform
- Produce a therapeutic vaccine under GMP standards and at clinical trial scale
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Would you like to utilize...
- Next generation sequencing -omics technologies (WGS, long and short read RNAseq, Ribo-Seq, immunopeptidomics) for lead prediction, detection and epitope validation
- Quantitative and spatial (single-cell) protein and transcriptomic technologies to study cancers
- High dimensional (40-plex) spectral flow cytometry panels
- TCR sequencing capability, integrated in spatial analyses
- Elispot assays for enumeration of specific functional T cell frequencies
- Adjuvants that have already been tested in the clinic, or which are newly developed
- Microneedles (dissolvable) for intracutaneous injections
- Innovative GMP manufacturing facilities for (cell-based) vaccines and nanomedicines
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Why should this be of interest?
Demonstrator Projects can be executed at various stages of the drug development pipeline, from lead discovery, to immune profiling and clinical trial-scale GMP production. Through joining, Demonstrator Project partners have access to the latest state-of-the-art equipment and collaborate with renowned scientists from leading cancer institutes in the Netherlands. In addition, our three innovation platforms (AI, Organoids and Patient Cohorts) are integrated at several stages in order to de-risk and accelerate the development process.
The Therapeutic Vaccines Workstream offers broad coverage of different flexible vaccine platforms and adjuvants, allowing you to design a new vaccine type and select from a panel of the most common vaccine delivery platforms to best-suit the development of your vaccine.
Furthermore, through Demonstrator Projects you can:
Identify antigens to target tumors of interest.
Improve your understanding of the tumor microenvironment, discover immune signals, unravel their complexity, and quantify and qualify the anti-tumor immune response to ultimately increase the chance of success in therapeutic vaccine development.
Work with expert partners to produce clinical-grade peptide, mRNA, DNA, or DC types of vaccines at scale.
Use patient-derived tumor material in discovery and optimization stages as well as later toxicity and efficacy studies to accelerate therapeutic vaccine development, by improving, for instance, understanding of mutations and resulting mutated tumour antigens that may be drivers of protective immunity.
Patient Cohorts Organoids Artificial Intelligence
A Demonstrator Project can be executed at any stage of the Workstream pipeline and incorporates at least one of the innovative Platforms (Patient Cohorts, Organoids and/or Artificial Intelligence). The stages are designed to ensure that potential oncology therapies are thoroughly evaluated and de-risked before moving on to clinical trials. One stage of a pipeline will be one Demonstrator Project, eligible for up to 50% co-funding.
Contact us and learn more about how to join our program.
Contact Us
Oncode Accelerator is a dynamic collaboration of more than 35 public and private partners. The following consortium partners are part of the Therapeutic Vaccines Workstream.
Below is a curated selection of scientific publications by the Workstream Therapeutic Vaccines. Click on each publication to access the full text online.