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Overview

Our Products

PepVax, Inc. has strived to build a strong library of candidates designed to treat various diseases, with a prime focus on cancer immunotherapy. PepVax's preclinical candidates are from PepVax's proprietary protein target library as well as various in-licensed and collaborative efforts with leading industrial partners.

Our Target: MAGE A

The MAGE-A antigen is a cancer testis antigen that is expressed within the human testes. It is highly immunogenic and has been considered as a viable target for the development of immunotherapies of tumors overexpressing the MAGE-A family of antigens. The MAGE-A sub-family of cancer testis antigen is expressed in germ cells, though not exclusively. They may drive malignancy and since those antigens are highly immunogenic they lend themselves to possibly becoming potential effective target for immunotherapies. Antigens particular to each MAGE-A family, has a unique expression pattern and related tissue target, which defines its differential use as immunotherapy regiments.

The present application claims benefit from the data, which identifies MHC Class I and MHC Class II specific restricted epitopes that are immunogenic. Restricted epitopes can be used in the development of immunotherapies targeting tumors that expresses MAGE-A family of tumors.

The restricted peptides will be part of an immunotherapy construct that could be used for the treatment of many tumors, with specific targets being Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC). The immunotherapy will take advantage of differential expression of MAGE protein variants via the MHC Class I pathway for T-Cell CD8+ lymphocytes, which will be complemented by the production of antibodies from B-cells via CD4+ lymphocytes.