The mission of Oxford-based, Cancer Research UK spin-out, Infinitopes, is to prevent cancer deaths by tackling the leading cause: Metastases.
The challenge
70-90% of cancer deaths, more than 10 million every year, are caused by metastases, when tumours spread from the original site. Infinitopes has developed technologies to hunt down metastases, to stop cancers from coming back.
The approach
The company leverages advanced, bespoke AI-guided discovery platforms capable of screening patient tumours to accurately identify target proteins that are uniquely on the surfaces of cancer cells. Infinitopes can then engineer proprietary, precision vaccines to attack those target ‘epitopes’ stimulating long-lasting protection.
Infinitopes’ vaccine-educated immune cells are extraordinarily efficient at seeking and destroying tumours. Patients’ immune systems become trained to provide whole-body surveillance, safely eliminating future metastases, to prevent cancers from recurring.
Because of its world-leading discovery technologies, Infinitopes can design vaccines ahead of time, to be available early to newly diagnosed patients, avoiding the costs, delays and clinical complexities of competing systems.
The company aims to do this again and again, cancer by cancer, for an infinite number of epitope targets, hence their name, Infinitopes.
Innovate UK’s role
Infinitopes received Innovate UK funding through the Investor Partnership Programme, which was pivotal to building and testing their cutting-edge discovery platform, and the Cancer Therapeutics Programme, to design, prepare and execute its phase I clinical trial, that scientists hope will be practice-changing. That phase I is scheduled to begin dosing in quarter three 2025, with results anticipated by quarter two in 2026.
We’re grateful to Innovate UK because the two awards that we won let us do two very exciting things. The first, for our Precision Immunomics group, has allowed us to enhance our technologies to identify safe and effective targets on the outside of tumour cells. And we literally do that better than anyone else on the planet, because of Innovate UK’s support.
Once we’d achieved that, we were able to take several of those into our phase I/IIa clinical trial, designed to test safety, and also that these vaccines stimulate strong, durable, lasting immunity, to protect patients from their cancers. Those two projects are directly as a result of these grants.
Dr Jonathan Kwok, CEO and Co-founder