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We are dedicated to developing a vaccine that can cure cancer

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We are dedicated to developing a vaccine that can cure cancer

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We are dedicated to developing a vaccine that can cure cancer

Slide

We are dedicated to developing a vaccine that can cure cancer

Slide

We are dedicated to developing a vaccine that can cure cancer

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What we do

CimCure is an international biotech company that develops cancer vaccines which directly target and destroy the tumour’s network of blood vessels so that the cancer stops growing and eventually disappears. Through its proprietary Immune-Boost (iBoost) technology, a foreign protein is fused to a protein found on the blood vessels going to the tumour, which, when injected into a patient, leads the body to produce antibodies which attack and destroy the tumour’s blood vessels. This unique process has been shown to effectively treat cancer and it does not create resistance to the therapy.

A brief history

CimCure was founded in 2016 as a spin-off from Prof. Arjan Griffioen’s Angiogenesis Laboratory at Amsterdam UMC, supported by the medical centre’s TTO Innovation Exchange Amsterdam. The company is led by Chief Scientific Officer, Arjan Griffioen, CEO, Diederik Engbersen, who both have extensive experience in the biotech industry. They started CimCure to design and develop a novel class of active cancer vaccines against all types of solid tumours at all stages.

The first financial means to start building the CimCure portfolio were provided in 2016 by the Dutch government and Amsterdam UMC in the form of proof-of-concept grants and pre-seed loans. With this financial input, the first product, CVx1, was tested in preclinical studies as well as in an efficacy study in client-owned dogs. The seed investment in CimCure was secured in July 2022, when a group of investors, led by Positron Ventures, ensured the financial means to test CimCure’s lead product in a phase 1 clinical study in patients.

CimCure has been housed at the Amsterdam UMC campus since 2016, where a fully equipped laboratory, and office spaces, were provided. In late autumn 2023 CimCure moved its HQ to a new location at the Health & Innovation District in Amsterdam.

An Illustrated guide to vaccination

The WHO states: ‘For centuries, humans have looked for ways to protect each other against deadly diseases. From experiments and taking chances to a global vaccine roll-out in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, immunization has a long history.

Vaccine research can raise challenging ethical questions, but vaccines have saved more human lives than any other medical invention in history.’

The most significant steps in the history of vaccination were achieved by the following four:

In 1796, an English physician, Dr Edward Jenner, created the world’s first successful vaccine. He found that people infected with cowpox were immune to smallpox. To prove this discovery, in May 1796, Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps with matter collected from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid. Despite suffering a local reaction and feeling unwell for several days, Phipps makes a full recovery.

Two months later, Jenner inoculated Phipps with matter from a human smallpox sore in order to test Phipps’ resistance. Phipps remained in perfect health, and became the first human to be vaccinated against smallpox. The term ‘vaccine’ is taken from the Latin word for cow, vacca.

Louis Pasteur invented vaccines against anthrax, in 1877, and rabies, in 1882, but also against chicken cholera. The discovery of the latter, in 1879, revolutionized work in infectious diseases and can be considered the birth of immunology.

William Coley was an American bone surgeon and cancer researcher who, in 1893, found that vaccinating cancer patients with bacterial infections was having positive effects on malignant tumou After months of research, Coley decided to pursue his notion that such recoveries, considered miraculous at the time, were provoked by an immune response in the body’s immune system.

Oswald Avery is seen as the inventor of the conjugate vaccine. Its use was first reported in the 1920s when Avery used conjugation of polysaccharides to bacterial carrier proteins in order to induce an antibody response. This work was not fully pursued after the discovery of penicillin to fight bacterial infections. However, in the 1980s Avery’s finding was used to vaccinate young children against encapsulated bacteria.

CimCure’s iBoost technology patent granted

Amsterdam, November 2023

Cimcure’s patent application on the iBoost technology has now been granted in both the US and in Europe.

CimCure secures € 3.9 million euro RVO (Netherlands Enterprise Agency) Innovation Credit

Amsterdam, October 2023

The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) has awarded CimCure with an Innovation Credit for the development of its lead compound, CVx1. The loan will be used for the GMP production and the execution of animal safety studies and a phase I/II clinical study patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Publication of safety and efficacy study in dogs with bladder cancer

Amsterdam – August, 2023

It was recently shown that targeting extracellular vimentin (eVim) is safe and effective in preclinical models. Here, we report the safety and efficacy in client-owned dogs with spontaneous bladder cancer of CVx1, an iBoost technology-based vaccine targeting eVim in combination with COX-2 inhibition. Read more

Jobs

We are looking for talented researchers with expertise in immunology and cancer on a continuous basis.

Interested, please contact us via:
Mail: info@cimcure.com | Phone: 0031 646 336 338