April 13, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
AMES, Iowa – Making its home among the corn and soy bean fields of Iowa, NewLink Genetics is attracting top scientific talent from around the world to pursue its cutting-edge research on Ebola and cancer, Dow Jones Business Wire reported this morning.
Since its founding in 1999, the company has attracted scientists and researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Maryland, across the United States and from faraway places like China and Russia, Dow Jones reported. The company, which employs more than 100 people, is also benefiting from science students from Iowa State University, which is also in Ames.
Still, to make itself more attractive to prospective researches and scientists, Dow Jones Business reported the company is expanding outside of its Midwest base to Texas and New England to commercialize drugs the company is developing.
New Chief Financial Officer Jack Henneman will operate out of the Texas office, the Des Moines Register reported.
While the company is providing satellite offices, company founder Charles Link said he is proud of NewLink’s Midwestern heritage.
Although NewLink does not yet have a drug on the market, the company’s research pipeline is showing promise from a late-stage pancreatic cancer treatment. The company is poised to begin working with federal regulators on bringing a treatment to market.
“2014 was a pivotal year for our company, and we advanced significantly across all areas of our business and most importantly toward our goal to bring new cancer therapies to patients,” Link, NewLink’s chief executive officer, said in a statement last month.
In February the company reported its Phase III immunotherapy pancreatic cancer study for algenpantucel-L, dubbed IMPRESS, is nearing its second interim readout, and the company is laying commercial groundwork if the therapy receives approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Algenpantucel-L consists of two pancreatic cancer cell lines (HAPa-1 and HAPa-2) that have been genetically modified to express alpha-gal carbohydrates on cell surface molecules.
The alpha-gal stimulates an immune response against pancreatic cancer-specific antigens in the tumor cell lines, the company said. The patient’s immune system then targets its own pancreatic cancer cells, destroying them, according to the company website. In addition to the IMPRESS study, algenpantucel-L is also being studied in combination with other drugs in another Phase III trial, dubbed PILLAR.
While it is making strides in its own cancer research, NewLink is also making moves by entering into several lucrative and promising partnerships with powerhouse pharmaceutical companies such as Genentech and Merck & Co. In October 2014 the company entered into a potential $1 billion partnership with Genentech to develop NewLink’s IDO inhibitor platform.
Likewise NewLink entered into an agreement with Merck that included an upfront payment of $30 million, to develop the company’s Ebola vaccine candidate licensed from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Last month the experimental Ebola vaccine began to be tested in communities hardest hit by the deadly disease in Guinea.
NewLink Genetics’ pipeline includes HyperAcute immunotherapies that stimulate the immune system to target and destroy cancer cells, as well as indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) pathway inhibitors that suppress the mechanisms by which tumors evade immune-mediated destruction, according to the company website . In addition to pancreatic cancer, the company is developing immunotherapies targeting non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, prostate cancer, renal cancer and breast cancer.
NewLink’s stock is slightly down from this morning’s high of $56.81, trading at $55.38 per share. NewLink shares are up 42.9 percent year-to-date.
