Genexine and NeoImmuneTech said last Friday that the National Cancer Institute, a U.S. agency under the National Institutes of Health, has decided to fund their clinical trial for HyLeukin-7, an immunotherapeutic drug candidate.

HyLeukin-7 is a new drug pipeline that combined optimized interleukin-7 (IL-7) with hyFc, an original technology owned by Genexine. The company plans to use the drug candidate in treating various diseases, including cancer, infectious diseases, and lymphopenia.

The announcement came after the two companies received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to go ahead with the phase 1 and 2a clinical trials for HyLeukin in March of this year.

The study, conducted jointly by the Adult Brain Cancer Consortium (ABTC) and the Cancer Immunotherapy Trials Network (CITN), plans to analyze the increase of lymphocyte levels in 12 to 75 brain cancer patients, who had previously received chemotherapy, after medicating HyLeukin. Professor Stuart Grossman from Johns Hopkins University will lead the study.

The trials will also evaluate the efficacy and side effects of the drug.

Brain cancer is a malignant tumor that infests the glial cell, which is abundant in brain tissues. Despite standard treatment methods such as surgery and chemotherapy, the average survival time after treatment is about 12 months.

The standard procedure of removing the cancer cells from the brain can rapidly shrink immune cells, especially T-cells, fighting cancer. Recent studies have reported that reduced T-cells can significantly shorten the survival rate of patients.

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