Pravin T P Kaumaya

Ohio State University, USA

Title: Engineering a novel PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor vaccine and combination immunotherapy with a HER-2 vaccine

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Biography

I am a professor and director of the Division of Reproductive Biology and Vaccine Research at The Ohio State University. I am also a member of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where I serve as director of the Peptide and Protein Engineering Laboratory. With a background in immunology and oncology, and with specialized training in chemical biology centered on cancer-immune system interactions, I focus my research on directing patient immune systems to recognize and kill their own cancer cells. My colleagues and I have utilized peptide vaccine B-cell epitopes to develop a diverse portfolio of patented receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) cancer vaccines designed to eliminate cancer cells by harnessing the body’s immune system. These vaccines were designed to address the problems of resistance and engineered to be used in combination. I have authored or co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals. I hold 25 issued patents (including nine U.S. patents and 16 foreign), I have 15 patents pending, and I have a number of invention disclosures in our innovation pipeline. In 2018, Imugene Limited, a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company based in Melbourne, Australia, negotiated two exclusive licenses containing rights to 10 of my patents — a purchase that encompassed our entire body of B-cell cancer vaccine inventions. The company maintains a collaboration with my lab under a series of sponsored research agreements that are enabling us to develop this work and translate preclinical studies in animal models into phase 1 clinical trials. The current focus of our Ohio State-Imugene collaboration is on PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors. In 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted investigational new drug approval (IND) to our collaboration for clinical testing of a vaccine known as PD1-Vaxx, which has shown to be well tolerated and capable of generating sustained anti-HER-2 immune response compared to monoclonal antibodies, to which most patients develop resistance. Our studies indicate peptide vaccination may help patients avoid therapeutic resistance and may offer a promising alternative to such monoclonal antibodies as Herceptin and Perjeta. In ongoing studies, we have developed a PD-L1 vaccine (PD-L1-Vaxx) that, when combined with the B-cell epitope-specific vaccine B-Vaxx, shows synergistic activities. We have developed several syngeneic cancer models to test our various combination immunotherapies. Finally, we are developing vaccines for CTLA-4, TIM3, LAG3 and TIGIT that will form a combination immunotherapeutic platform for developing cancer cures.

Abstract