Vaccinogen Plans Move To Baltimore After $80 Million In New Funding; Will Increase Headcount By 300 Percent
August 27, 2014
By Jessica Wilson, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Vaccinogen , the Frederick, MD-based pharmaceutical company, has declared its intention to move to Baltimore, MD in the wake of its August 25th announcement of an influx of $80 million funding from Stockholm-based investor group, The Investment Syndciate (TIS).
Baltimore appeals to the company because of its location near a major airport, the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, and the fact that the city hosts several research universities, including the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where its new Chairman of the Board, famed pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD, is an Emeritus Professor of Neurosurgery, Oncology, Plastic Surgery and Pediatrics.
The company plans to move to Baltimore within the next six months and will also set up its manufacturing in the city, according to an article by Sarah Gantz of The Baltimore Business Journal. Gantz also reported that Vaccinogen intends to increase its headcount by more than 300%, growing from seven people in Frederick to 25 employees in Baltimore.
The funding, the move and the establishment of manufacturing facilities will spur OncoVAX, its drug for the reduction of the recurrence of colon cancer, to commercial availability as quickly as possible. Vaccinogen will use the TIS funds primarily to support its impending Phase IIIb trial under an FDA Special Protocol Assessment (SPA), which the company said would begin within sixty days of “obtaining adequate funding.”
The company describes OncoVAX as “a patented process that leverages a patient’s own live tumor cells to launch a broad immune response against colon cancer” and believes once approved, the drug therapy would be “the first-ever patient-specific immunotherapy to prevent recurrence of colon cancer.”
“Cancer disguises itself well as non-threatening human tissue. OncoVAX pulls off that mask, exposes it as a threat and provides the immune system a roadmap to effectively destroy the cancer. Based on Phase III OncoVAX data published in The Lancet, I believe that Vaccinogen’s unique tumor-cell vaccine approach to ‘train’ the body to attack its own cancer has the potential to significantly reduce recurrences and mortality in colon cancer and many other pervasive malignancies affecting the global population,” said Dr. Carson.
Five clinical studies of OncoVAX, including a Phase III trial with the optimum dose and regimen, have been completed to date. Vaccinogen will look to enroll 550 patients from about 50 hospitals in the Phase IIIb study. “We’re really excited about getting the study up and running as fast as possible,” said Andrew L. Tussing, Vaccinogen co-founder and recently appointed CEO.
