Interview | Dongho Kim, CEO of NA Vaccine Institute

“(Japan’s National Cancer Center) agreed that the difficulties they had in clinical development could be solved through our Nexavac platform, so the collaboration took place.”

On the 1st, the NA Vaccine Institute signed a business agreement with Japan's National Cancer Center (NCC) to promote a joint project for the development of precision anti-cancer treatments. According to this agreement, the NA Vaccine Institute plans to utilize NexaVac, an anticancer platform technology, to improve the efficacy of existing anticancer treatments and develop precision anticancer drugs to prevent cancer recurrence.

NA Vaccine Institute supplies clinical drugs using NexaVac, and NCC will use it to conduct clinical trials to develop a liver cancer treatment in Japan next year. It targets liver cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, cervical cancer, and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection.

Heat News heard in detail about this research agreement based on the explanation of Kim Dong-ho, CEO of the NA Vaccine Institute. After receiving his doctoral degree in molecular biology from the University of Texas, CEO Kim served as director of the RNAi Center at the Beckman Institute at City of Hope Hospital for four years.

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▶Before NexaVac, I would like to talk about anticancer vaccines first. I understand that it is still not easy to develop an anti-cancer vaccine. What is the reason?

▷Here is a brief explanation of the principles of anti-cancer vaccines. When an antigen and an adjuvant are mixed and injected, T cells are produced, and the T cells play the role of killing cancer cells. To produce vaccines in this way, proteins and peptides can be used as antigens, and peptides are used in terms of productivity.

Through various development processes over the past half century, there have been no problems in terms of safety in using peptides as antigens. But the problem is that the peptide itself is not immune. So, we approach the concept of finding an epitope (antigen recognition site), mass producing it, and injecting it. But this concept also didn't actually work in the human body. The vaccine development strategy of using peptides as antigens seemed to be dying out.

 

▶How did Nexavac overcome these limitations?

▷We created NexaVac, which combines an existing peptide antigen and Nexavant (our self-developed adjuvant). Using the NexaVac platform, we created a peptide vaccine and conducted preclinical tests on various animal models of cancer metastasis, resulting in positive results.

Currently, preclinical experiments have been conducted on various types of cancer, including cervical cancer, and significant results have been obtained, and good results have also been obtained when used in combination with existing immunotherapy drugs. Currently, preclinical trials of anticancer vaccine candidates targeting KRAS gene mutations are also underway.

 

▶How did you come to collaborate with the National Cancer Center of Japan?

▷The National Cancer Center of Japan has been conducting basic research on peptide vaccines for a long time. However, it has been difficult to obtain meaningful results from clinical trials. We agreed that the difficulties they had in clinical development could be solved through our Nexavac platform, and the collaboration took place.

If we provide anti-cancer vaccine candidates using the NexaVac platform, Japan's National Cancer Center will first conduct clinical trials on liver cancer. We retain all commercial rights. Starting with liver cancer, we plan to expand our research to target various genetic mutations such as non-small cell lung cancer targeting EGFR mutations and KRAS.

The point of this collaboration is to conduct joint research with Japanese national research institutions through a contract rather than a simple business agreement (MOU).

Preclinical results of liver cancer animal model using the NexaVac platform [Source = NA Vaccine Institute introduction material]