myNEO evolves into myNEO Therapeutics to reflect its new strategy to develop off the shelf cancer vaccine immunotherapeutics
myNEO, a biotech company focused on exploiting “dark genome” targets to develop novel therapeutic cancer vaccines, today announces its new name – myNEO Therapeutics. The new name reflects the company’s transition from an immunogenomic profiling expert towards an integrated drug discovery company focused on the development of a pipeline of therapeutic cancer vaccines.
myNEO Therapeutics to focus on building proprietary product pipeline based on a novel class of shared therapeutic cancer targets derived from the dark genome named “camyotopes”
Lead product CAMYO-01 incorporates a pool of colorectal cancer-specific camyotopes formulated into an mRNA-based vaccine
CAMYO-01 is advancing towards clinical development for the treatment of colorectal cancer
Since the company was founded in 2018, it has developed and patented proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms that are state-of-the art in identifying novel cancer antigens, allowing optimal selection of the best cancer targets for use in immunotherapies.
Building on this deep knowledge, internal research efforts have revealed a novel class of lncRNA-derived “dark genome” antigens which myNEO Therapeutics has named “camyotopes”. These tumor-derived epitopes originate from the non-coding part of the genome, or dark genome, which is increasingly associated with a variety of diseases including cancer. Preclinical validation of these targets has reinforced the company’s belief that camyotopes are a potentially game changing class of tumor antigens for cancer immunotherapy for the many patients currently lacking sufficient actionable immunogenic targets.
Following the discovery and validation of a number of camyotopes, myNEO Therapeutics has made rapid progress in advancing its first therapeutic product, CAMYO-01, towards the clinic. CAMYO-01 incorporates a pool of colorectal cancer-specific camyotopes formulated into an mRNA-based vaccine.
Unlike personalized vaccines that require patient-unique targets and upfront genomic analysis of each patient’s tumor, camyotopes are conserved in more than 95% of the target cancer patient population. As such, treatments based on these targets can be made readily available off-the-shelf with no need for expensive and time-consuming tumor screening thereby improving access and providing a significant benefit to patients.
In addition, myNEO Therapeutics has shown that selected camyotopes are specifically translated as well as highly abundant in cancer cells which is expected to limit off-target toxicity and de-risk immune escape which can render treatment ineffective.
myNEO Therapeutics is currently performing additional pre-clinical validation experiments to prepare for the first phase of clinical development for CAMYO-01, which is expected to start before the end of 2024.
Cedric Bogaert, co-founder and CEO of myNEO Therapeutics commented: “This evolution of our corporate identity to myNEO Therapeutics marks a pivotal milestone in our strategic development and illustrates the significant progress we are making in realizing our vision. CAMYO-01 is only the start of our plan to develop a robust pipeline of therapeutic cancer vaccines based on our unique technology platform and insights into the dark genome which we believe can unlock the future of cancer immunotherapy for the benefit of a broad population of patients."